Scientific Definition
When rewards don't match stated values, culture quietly decays toward what is rewarded.
Plain-English Definition
When rewards don't match stated values, culture quietly decays toward what is rewarded.
Feynman Explanation
Culture is the average of what you tolerate and what you pay.
Core Principle
When rewards don't match stated values, culture quietly decays toward what is rewarded.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
When rewards don't match stated values, culture quietly decays toward what is rewarded.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Comp design predicts culture better than handbooks.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Culture is the average of what you tolerate and what you pay.
Examples
- Ethics-statement firms with sales-only comp.
- Comp design predicts culture better than handbooks.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Comp-values alignment audits. Behavioral promotion criteria.
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.
- Comp-values alignment audits. Behavioral promotion criteria.
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.
Once-a-year feedback rewards once-a-year behavior.
The more a quantitative indicator drives decisions, the more it distorts the process it measures.
Donors penalize 'overhead'; charities under-invest in capacity.
Donors penalize 'overhead' and starve capacity that produces outcomes.
A reward designed to reduce X produces more X.
Squeezing all slack from a system optimizes throughput but eliminates resilience.
'Equal value' exchanges incentivize subjective appraisal gaming to trade low-utility land for high-value public assets.
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
Deep specialization improves local output but breaks cross-domain understanding.
Greedy improvement loops climb hills that aren't the highest hill.
Insulation from risk changes the risks people take.
Systems with weak corrective feedback drift unchecked into failure modes.