Scientific Definition
Players choose how much to contribute to a shared pot; selfish theory predicts zero, real humans contribute, and punishment of free-riders sustains cooperation.
Plain-English Definition
Players choose how much to contribute to a shared pot; selfish theory predicts zero, real humans contribute, and punishment of free-riders sustains cooperation.
Feynman Explanation
Economists predicted defection. Humans built civilization anyway.
Core Principle
Players choose how much to contribute to a shared pot; selfish theory predicts zero, real humans contribute, and punishment of free-riders sustains cooperation.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Players choose how much to contribute to a shared pot; selfish theory predicts zero, real humans contribute, and punishment of free-riders sustains cooperation.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Team norms, open-source maintenance, internal platform investment.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Economists predicted defection. Humans built civilization anyway.
Examples
- Fehr & Gächter: peer punishment dramatically raises and sustains contributions.
- Team norms, open-source maintenance, internal platform investment.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Make contribution visible and free-riding costly. Cooperation needs teeth, not posters.
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.
- Make contribution visible and free-riding costly. Cooperation needs teeth, not posters.
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.
Responding in kind — favors for favors, harms for harms.
Much of human behavior is positioning for status.
The willingness to be vulnerable to another party's actions.
Game theory adjusted for how humans actually play — including fairness, reciprocity, and limited reasoning.
Decisions depend on what other strategic actors will do.
Decision-makers should bear the consequences of their decisions.
One party's gain is exactly another party's loss.
Combine extreme safety with extreme risk; avoid the middle.
Allocating finite resources across many fronts when the opponent does the same — no dominant strategy exists.
Coordinated action that produces outcomes unavailable to individual actors.
Unconscious psychological strategies that protect self-image.
Designing organizations to ride doubling curves — AI, data, compute, biotech — rather than linear improvement.