THE BIG LIST OF
BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE PRINCIPLES

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. 

The Default Effect

Defaults 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

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The Fresh Start Effect

The Fresh Start Effect

The 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

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The Pratfall Effect

The Pratfall Effect

According to the Pratfall Effect, making mistakes might actually increase our likeability. However, it only works if people already perceive you as capable or performing

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Framing Effect

The Framing Effect

Choices can be presented in a way that emphasizes the advantages or disadvantages of a certain choice, changing how desirable they are in comparison. This

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The Mere Exposure Effect

The Mere Exposure Effect

The 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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Control Premium

Control Premium

The 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

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The Self Reference Effect

The Self-Reference Effect

The Reference to Oneself According to Effect, when knowledge is pertinent to them, individuals remember it more readily. Different ways in which our brains encode

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The Cobra Effect Principle

The Cobra Effect

The Cobra Effect, also known as perverse incentives, is a term used by German economist Horst Siebert to describe unanticipated negative outcomes when a reward

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Reciprocation

The 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

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Confirmation Bias

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation 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

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The Halo Effect

The Halo Effect

The 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

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Cognitive Ease

Cognitive Ease

The 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

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The Decoy Effect

The Decoy Effect

The Decoy Effect explains how choices are impacted by price comparisons between products. It claims that people make choices based on personal preferences when there

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Operational Transparency

Operational Transparency

Operational Transparency is the approach your business uses to include windows so customers can view the work that goes into their experience. Recent studies have

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Temporal Distortion

Temporal Distortion

Time distortion, also known as temporal distortion, is a change in how someone perceives time. A temporal distortion has occurred when you have said to

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Salience Bias

Salience Bias

Salience 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

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The Endowment Effect

The Endowment Effect

The Endowment Effect is a psychological bias that leads people to place a higher, frequently unreasonable, value on things they own than they would otherwise.

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Choice Overload Effect

The Choice Overload Effect

A psychological concept known as the “Choice Overload Effect” describes the uneasiness that results from having so much information that you feel like doing nothing

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Blue Decision Fatigue

Decision Fatigue

It takes a lot of mental effort to decide. Decision fatigue is the term used to describe how making a lot of decisions can drain

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The Cocktail Party Effect

The Cocktail Party Effect

In the 1950s, Colin Cherry, a British cognitive scientist, identified the cocktail party effect. Cherry was curious as to why people focused on certain things.

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Anchoring

Anchoring (Heuristic)

A specific type of priming effect called “anchoring” uses an initial exposure to a number as a reference point and influences later judgments. The process,

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Loss Aversion

Loss Aversion

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

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Environmental Priming

Environmental Priming

Priming is the process by which our brains activate unconscious connections in response to a stimulus, as was first shown in the 1970s (also called

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The Zeigarnik Effect

The Zeigarnik Effect

The 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

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Simplicity Theory

Simplicity Theory

Customers 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.

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The Peak End Rule

The Peak-end Rule

Infinite Peak Rule states that people evaluate an experience depending on how they felt at its height and its trough, rather than the average of

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The Gruen Effect

The Gruen Effect

Gruen Effect (also known as the Gruen Transfer). They end up forgetting why they went to the store in the first place, which leads to

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The Cashless Effect

The Cashless Effect

According to the “Cashless Effect,” customers find it more difficult to spend money the more tangible their payments are. The term “pain of payment” is

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Herd Behavior

Herd Behavior

When people follow others’ lead rather than relying on their own knowledge or making their own decisions, this influence is obvious. Herding theory has a

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