Behavioral Economics — Magazine Staples
60 terms across 9 themes — every definition in the Atlas sourced from this manual, with executive examples and counter-moves.
Sacrificing for others without expecting a personal reward.
The first number on the table silently sets the range for every number after it.
The study of how real humans actually decide — bounded, social, emotional, and inconsistent.
Game theory adjusted for how humans actually play — including fairness, reciprocity, and limited reasoning.
We overweight outcomes that are certain relative to merely probable ones.
Binding the future self with a present cost-of-defection to overcome impulse and inertia.
Exposure to a stimulus quietly activates related concepts that bias subsequent behavior.
We pay a real price to keep control of an outcome, even when delegating would pay better.
We don't decide once — we narrow, then evaluate, then commit.
We choose more variety than we'll actually want when picking for the future all at once.
A long-run planner self in conflict with a short-run impulsive self.
System 1 is fast, automatic, intuitive; System 2 is slow, effortful, deliberate.
Prices driven far above intrinsic value by feedback loops of belief and behavior.
Asset prices fully reflect available information; you can't reliably beat the market.
Cut options by knocking out one attribute at a time, hardest threshold first.
A social preference for equitable outcomes, even at personal cost.
Gigerenzer's view: simple heuristics that exploit the structure of the environment can beat complex models.
An automatic action triggered by a stable cue — built through repetition.
Following the group instead of using private information or independent judgment.
A mental shortcut that substitutes a hard question with an easier one.
The mythical fully rational, self-interested, utility-maximizing agent neoclassical models assume.
Behaving truthfully in transactions and disclosures — measurable and cross-culturally variable.
In a cold state, we systematically underestimate how a hot state will hijack us.
Decisions are shaped by who we believe we are — not only by monetary payoffs.
Anything — monetary or not — that shifts the expected payoff of an action.
Distaste for unequal payoffs — including when we'd benefit.
The persistence of a state — not from preference, but from non-action.
Choosing not to look at freely available, decision-relevant information.
Evaluated separately, the smaller-but-complete option beats the larger-but-flawed one.
Doing something good gives us mental permission to do something bad.
Wansink's finding that environmental cues — plate size, packaging, lighting — silently drive consumption.
Frequent evaluation amplifies loss aversion and produces overly conservative behavior.
Spreading limited resources evenly across options regardless of merit.
A change to the choice architecture that predictably shifts behavior — without removing options.
Spending money triggers genuine psychological pain — and credit cards quietly mute it.
Physically dividing a resource into smaller units slows consumption.
We overweight tiny probabilities of large gains or losses.
Choosing to restrict your future options now, to avoid making a worse choice later.
An ordering of options by expected satisfaction — often constructed in the moment rather than retrieved.
The same person ranks A over B in one frame and B over A in another.
Putting off action under present bias, inertia, or choice overload.
Scarcity (of money, time, bandwidth) narrows attention and degrades decision quality.
We judge probability by absolute counts rather than ratios.
Responding in kind — favors for favors, harms for harms.
When choosing between two options, the one you recognize is judged more positively.
We judge outcomes relative to a reference point, not in absolute terms.
We choose to minimize the regret we anticipate — not the expected value.
People operate in promotion focus (chasing gains, eager) or prevention focus (avoiding losses, vigilant).
Risk decisions are driven by current emotion — not just by computed probabilities.
Less available = perceived as more valuable.
The capacity to override impulse in service of a longer-horizon goal.
We remember the beginning and the end of a list better than the middle.
Choice architecture that adds friction in service of bad intentions.
Unwritten rules of behavior — descriptive (what people do) or injunctive (what people approve of).
Preferences that depend on others' outcomes — fairness, reciprocity, altruism, inequity aversion.
Pick the option that wins on the single most important cue; ignore the rest.
The relative valuation we place on rewards now vs. later — and how steeply we discount.
The willingness to be vulnerable to another party's actions.
The satisfaction or value a person derives from an outcome — the unit economists try to maximize.
'Free' is a different psychological category — disproportionately attractive.