Scientific Definition
Decision-makers should bear the consequences of their decisions.
Plain-English Definition
Decision-makers should bear the consequences of their decisions.
Feynman Explanation
Advice from people with no downside is worth what they paid to give it.
Core Principle
Decision-makers should bear the consequences of their decisions.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Decision-makers should bear the consequences of their decisions.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Aligning decision rights with decision consequences.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Advice from people with no downside is worth what they paid to give it.
Examples
- Bank execs who don't hold their own bank's stock.
- Aligning decision rights with decision consequences.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Audit your own org: who decides, who pays the price if it's wrong?
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.
- Audit your own org: who decides, who pays the price if it's wrong?
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
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Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Game theory adjusted for how humans actually play — including fairness, reciprocity, and limited reasoning.
Decisions depend on what other strategic actors will do.
Players choose how much to contribute to a shared pot; selfish theory predicts zero, real humans contribute, and punishment of free-riders sustains cooperation.
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.
Individual rationality produces collective irrationality.
Responding in kind — favors for favors, harms for harms.
The ratio of useful information to irrelevant information.