Scientific Definition
Using personal stories or isolated examples instead of evidence.
Plain-English Definition
Using personal stories or isolated examples instead of evidence.
Feynman Explanation
One data point is not a trend. It is a story.
Core Principle
Using personal stories or isolated examples instead of evidence.
Mechanisms
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Using personal stories or isolated examples instead of evidence.
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Leadership anecdotes often override systematic data.
Inputs (Triggers)
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Outputs (Behaviors)
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Behavioral Signature
One data point is not a trend. It is a story.
Examples
- 'My cousin did fine without a degree' shapes hiring policy.
- Leadership anecdotes often override systematic data.
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Famous Experiments
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Design Principles
- Ask for the denominator behind every story.
Measurement Approaches
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Evidence
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The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Ask for the denominator behind every story.
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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.
Concluding that a claim is false because the argument for it is flawed.
Assuming qualities of one thing transfer to another because they are associated.
Drawing conclusions about individuals from group-level data.
Assuming something exists because we can name or define it.
Relying solely on metrics that are easily quantified while ignoring what matters.
Cherry-picking data to fit a pattern after the fact.
Deriving general rules from specific examples; the leap from instance to concept.
The brain evolved to reason adaptively, not always truthfully, to reduce the cost of errors.
We solve problems by adding, even when subtracting would be better.
Assuming that if one option is true, another must be false, when both can be true.
Presuming a purposeful actor behind events that may have no actor at all.
What cannot be settled by experiment is not worth debating.