Scientific Definition
Unwritten rules of behavior — descriptive (what people do) or injunctive (what people approve of).
Plain-English Definition
Unwritten rules of behavior — descriptive (what people do) or injunctive (what people approve of).
Feynman Explanation
The strongest policy in any organization is the one no one wrote down.
Core Principle
Unwritten rules of behavior — descriptive (what people do) or injunctive (what people approve of).
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Unwritten rules of behavior — descriptive (what people do) or injunctive (what people approve of).
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Culture is the operative social-norm system; mission statements rarely are.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
The strongest policy in any organization is the one no one wrote down.
Examples
- Energy use drops when households learn they're using more than neighbors.
- Culture is the operative social-norm system; mission statements rarely are.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Surface the actual norm. Then decide whether to reinforce or replace it.
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.
- Surface the actual norm. Then decide whether to reinforce or replace it.
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.
A symmetric bell-shaped distribution where most values cluster around the mean.
Earned authority from publishing original frameworks that other operators adopt as their own.
Players choose how much to contribute to a shared pot; selfish theory predicts zero, real humans contribute, and punishment of free-riders sustains cooperation.
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.
Combine extreme safety with extreme risk; avoid the middle.
Game theory adjusted for how humans actually play — including fairness, reciprocity, and limited reasoning.
Allocating finite resources across many fronts when the opponent does the same — no dominant strategy exists.
The same message in a different setting produces a different result.
Coordinated action that produces outcomes unavailable to individual actors.
Unconscious psychological strategies that protect self-image.