To understand how people use digital tools and respond to sales or marketing initiatives, we study the field of behavioral science. B. F. Skinner, a psychologist, and philosopher was the founder of the discipline. Since it’s founding, behavioral science has expanded to include many different principles that have been replicated in the lab.
At Field Theory, we put together a list of our favorite behavioral science principles. Each principle is beyond fascinating on it’s own but to help tell the story, we’ve paired each with a painting created by AI.
Loss aversion is a psychological concept that was first introduced by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman and states that people will do anything to avoid
Explore MoreThe social custom of reciprocating a favorable activity with another positive action is known as reciprocity. It’s the reason you feel owe someone when they
Explore MoreThe Fresh Start Effect is a term used to describe people’s propensity to move toward a goal after occurrences that signal new beginnings. The beginning
Explore MoreIt takes a lot of mental effort to decide. Decision fatigue is the term used to describe how making a lot of decisions can drain
Explore MoreThe Zeigarnik Effect is the compulsion we have, even when we’re not very engaged in the task at hand, to finish what we’ve started. Bluma
Explore MoreThe Cobra Effect, also known as perverse incentives, is a term used by German economist Horst Siebert to describe unanticipated negative outcomes when a reward
Explore MoreAccording to the “Cashless Effect,” customers find it more difficult to spend money the more tangible their payments are. The term “pain of payment” is
Explore MoreInfinite Peak Rule states that people evaluate an experience depending on how they felt at its height and its trough, rather than the average of
Explore MoreCustomers like straightforward experiences. A yearly listing of the brands with the least complicated customer experiences is known as the Simplicity Index, developed by Siegel+Gale.
Explore MoreChoices can be presented in a way that emphasizes the advantages or disadvantages of a certain choice, changing how desirable they are in comparison. This
Explore MoreThe Decoy Effect explains how choices are impacted by price comparisons between products. It claims that people make choices based on personal preferences when there
Explore MoreConfirmation bias is a term used by psychologist Peter Wason to refer to people’s propensity to look for, favor, and remember information that supports their
Explore MoreAccording to the Pratfall Effect, making mistakes might actually increase our likeability. However, it only works if people already perceive you as capable or performing
Explore MoreWhen people follow others’ lead rather than relying on their own knowledge or making their own decisions, this influence is obvious. Herding theory has a
Explore MoreA psychological concept known as the “Choice Overload Effect” describes the uneasiness that results from having so much information that you feel like doing nothing
Explore MoreThe ease or fluency with which our brains digest information is known as cognitive ease or fluency. Something’s cognitive easiness will change how we feel
Explore MoreIn the 1950s, Colin Cherry, a British cognitive scientist, identified the cocktail party effect. Cherry was curious as to why people focused on certain things.
Explore MoreGruen Effect (also known as the Gruen Transfer). They end up forgetting why they went to the store in the first place, which leads to
Explore MoreTime distortion, also known as temporal distortion, is a change in how someone perceives time. A temporal distortion has occurred when you have said to
Explore MoreOperational Transparency is the approach your business uses to include windows so customers can view the work that goes into their experience. Recent studies have
Explore MoreThe Halo Effect, also known as the Halo Bias, was named after psychologist Edward Thorndike and refers to people’s propensity to base their whole judgment
Explore MoreThe Endowment Effect is a psychological bias that leads people to place a higher, frequently unreasonable, value on things they own than they would otherwise.
Explore MoreDefaults are pre-determined decisions that apply if a client doesn’t take any action. According to studies, consumers hardly ever alter the default settings. Microsoft discovered
Explore MoreThe Reference to Oneself According to Effect, when knowledge is pertinent to them, individuals remember it more readily. Different ways in which our brains encode
Explore MoreThe control premium, as used in behavioral economics, describes people’s readiness to forego prospective rewards in favor of maintaining control (and avoiding delegation) over their
Explore MoreSalience is a term used to indicate something’s emotional impact or prominence. An element is salient if it stands out from its surroundings. It is
Explore MoreA specific type of priming effect called “anchoring” uses an initial exposure to a number as a reference point and influences later judgments. The process,
Explore MorePriming is the process by which our brains activate unconscious connections in response to a stimulus, as was first shown in the 1970s (also called
Explore MoreThe Mere Exposure effect, a theory first proposed by social psychologist Robert Zajonc in the 1960s, holds that when people are familiar with something, they
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