Scientific Definition
When the limbic system overrides higher cognition and behavior follows ancient circuits, not chosen values.
Plain-English Definition
When the limbic system overrides higher cognition and behavior follows ancient circuits, not chosen values.
Feynman Explanation
Adrenaline doesn't care about your strategy deck.
Core Principle
When the limbic system overrides higher cognition and behavior follows ancient circuits, not chosen values.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
When the limbic system overrides higher cognition and behavior follows ancient circuits, not chosen values.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Most boardroom blowups, viral PR disasters, and bad hires happen here.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Adrenaline doesn't care about your strategy deck.
Examples
- Goleman's framing of LeDoux's neuroscience for general readers.
- Most boardroom blowups, viral PR disasters, and bad hires happen here.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Build the pause between stimulus and response. That pause is the whole game.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Build the pause between stimulus and response. That pause is the whole game.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
The capacity to recognize, understand, and manage emotions — your own and others'.
Emotional states distort cognition and decision-making.
Predicting how we will feel in the future, usually inaccurately.
Dacher Keltner's research: the emotion of encountering vastness reliably reduces self-focus and inflammation, and increases prosociality.
The drive to explore and understand for its own sake.
Negative emotions fade faster than positive ones.
A strategy to influence behavior by amplifying fear and uncertainty.
Effects of an intervention spread to other areas beyond the intended target.
Channeling disruptive emotions and impulses into productive action.
How will I feel about this in 10 minutes / 10 months / 10 years?
Basics first (health/finances), then depth (mastery/impact), then altruism (widening circle).
A group decides on a course of action that nobody actually wants, because everyone assumes others prefer it.