Persuasion & Behavior Design

Discount framing nudges people to buy things they wouldn't otherwise want.

We favor people who are similar to us or who like us.

It's true because authority says so.

Using an authority's opinion as evidence, regardless of its merits.

We defer to perceived expertise, rank, or uniform.

We overweight whoever has the bigger title in the room.

Game theory adjusted for how humans actually play — including fairness, reciprocity, and limited reasoning.

The mind can be socially influenced toward conclusions that bypass scrutiny.

Offering value in exchange for influence over a decision.

Voluntary commitments reward PR while deferring real abatement.

Choosing the easy path repeatedly compounds into stagnation.

Binding the future self with a present cost-of-defection to overcome impulse and inertia.

Once we say it publicly, we'll defend it past the data.

A mechanism that locks you into a future action to overcome present temptation.

Small advantages, applied consistently, become uncatchable.

Exposure to a stimulus quietly activates related concepts that bias subsequent behavior.

A hidden variable that influences both supposed cause and supposed effect.

Remembering past attitudes and behavior as more consistent with present ones.

Environmental factors influence perception and judgment.

The same message in a different setting produces a different result.

Believing previously learned misinformation even after it has been corrected.

Influence tactics weaponized — manipulation, coercion, exploitation of trust.

Endless choice and swipe loops reduce commitment and increase dissatisfaction.

Whatever is pre-selected wins more often than it should.

Defaults bypass active cognition.

Brain network active during rest and mind-wandering — and during creative insight.

Glucose, omega-3s, sleep, and hydration each influence decision quality.

We dismiss the ideas and merits of people we dislike.

Substance dependence distorts judgment and accelerates decline.

What we wear influences how we think and perform.

The brain minimizes effort by default — most cognition is on cruise control.

Continuing a failing course of action because of prior investment.

A strategy to influence behavior by amplifying fear and uncertainty.

Believing past random events influence future independent ones.

Hard tactics use pressure and authority; soft tactics use rapport, reasoning, and inspiration.

Systems paid per filled bed have weak incentives to invest in prevention or community health.

Believing we influence outcomes that are largely random.

Behaviors you can't change are usually protecting a hidden, competing commitment.

Persuasion power is a function of perceived expertise × perceived trustworthiness.

Authenticity becomes a performance the moment it becomes a paycheck.

A pre-commitment to gatekeepers (curators, trusted reviewers, criteria) so the flood of content doesn't drown the signal.

We say yes more often to people we like.

We're more persuaded by people we like.

People will obey authority even when asked to harm others.

A consistent minority can shift the majority's views over time.

Neurons that fire both when acting and when observing the action.

Originators paid on volume, not on default rates.

A symmetric bell-shaped distribution where most values cluster around the mean.

A change to the choice architecture that predictably shifts behavior — without removing options.

The value of the next-best thing you could have done.

Every yes is a no to everything else competing for that hour, dollar, or slot.

Overestimating the probability of bad outcomes.

Originators paid on volume, not on default rates, fueled the subprime collapse.

Choosing to restrict your future options now, to avoid making a worse choice later.

An assumption embedded in a sentence's structure — accepted by default unless actively challenged.

Scarcity (of money, time, bandwidth) narrows attention and degrades decision quality.

Cooperation between unrelated agents when future reciprocity is likely.

Responding in kind — favors for favors, harms for harms.

When someone does us a favor, we feel pressure to return it.

Brain system that decides what's important right now.