Scientific Definition
Much of human behavior is positioning for status.
Plain-English Definition
Much of human behavior is positioning for status.
Feynman Explanation
Strip status out of org behavior and 80% of meetings disappear.
Core Principle
Much of human behavior is positioning for status.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Much of human behavior is positioning for status.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Recognizing what's actually being optimized.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Strip status out of org behavior and 80% of meetings disappear.
Examples
- Internal politics. Conference attendance. Comp negotiation.
- Recognizing what's actually being optimized.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Design status incentives intentionally. They exist whether you design them or not.
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.
- Design status incentives intentionally. They exist whether you design them or not.
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.
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.
The willingness to be vulnerable to another party's actions.
Allocating finite resources across many fronts when the opponent does the same — no dominant strategy exists.
Combine extreme safety with extreme risk; avoid the middle.
Game theory adjusted for how humans actually play — including fairness, reciprocity, and limited reasoning.
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.
Decisions depend on what other strategic actors will do.
Individual rationality produces collective irrationality.
The ratio of useful information to irrelevant information.