Human Behavior Elements (Periodic Table)

Clear ownership of outcomes, not just tasks.

Asymmetric information attracts the worst counterparties.

We defer to perceived expertise, rank, or uniform.

Vastness that exceeds existing schemas dissolves the self briefly.

Negative feedback returns a system toward a target.

Membership in a group is a baseline human need.

Individually rational choices that produce a collectively bad outcome.

We seek tasks where we feel effective and improving.

Competing loyalties that compromise judgment.

Value is judged against whatever sits next to it.

Outcomes depend on aligning choices, not on who 'wins.'

Signals whose value depends on being expensive to fake.

An information gap creates a pull toward closing it.

A cost or benefit borne by someone outside the transaction.

Anticipated harm narrows attention and accelerates action.

Output of a process re-enters as input.

People consume shared resources without contributing.

Any small cost — clicks, forms, thought — that shifts behavior.

We process evidence in ways that protect our group identity.

Inability to see the incentives shaping one's own behavior.

Accumulated workarounds for misaligned incentives that compound like technical debt.

Reward systems slowly diverge from the outcomes they were meant to drive.

Without active design, incentives decay toward gameable proxies.

Behavior bends toward whatever the system actually rewards.

Perceived fairness of outcomes, process, and treatment.

Behavior that benefits genetic relatives at cost to oneself.

We say yes more often to people we like.

Describing a choice in terms of potential losses to trigger loss aversion.

Treating the measure as the goal it was meant to approximate.

Positive self-evaluation tied to recognized achievement.

Cooperation between unrelated agents when future reciprocity is likely.

Output amplifies input — virtuous or vicious cycle.

Stored social capital from prior behavior.

Preference for certain outcomes over uncertain ones of equal expected value.

Every person knows what they own and what they don't.

Things feel more valuable when supply or time is limited.

Painful self-evaluation against a social standard.

Costly actions that credibly communicate hard-to-observe traits.

Unwritten rules that govern behavior in a group.

Coordination problem where cooperation pays more but defection is safer.

Position in a hierarchy is a primary driver of behavior.

Threshold past which small inputs cause disproportionate change.

Visible information about decisions, processes, and tradeoffs.

Strong in-group loyalty paired with out-group skepticism.

Shared identity ('we') drives compliance harder than shared interest.

Unpredictable rewards produce the strongest, most persistent behavior.