Concepts (page 35)

  • The 9x Effect

    The 9x effect is John Gourville's rule that a new product has to be about nine times better than the thing it replaces before people will actually switch. The nine is arithmetic, not measurement…

  • The Abstinence Violation Effect

    The abstinence violation effect is the set of cognitive and emotional reactions to a lapse that make a full relapse more likely. It was named by Alan Marlatt and Judith Gordon in Relapse Prevention…

  • The Actor-Observer Asymmetry

    The actor-observer asymmetry is the textbook claim that people explain their own behaviour by the situation and other people's by their character. You were late because the traffic was terrible; he…

  • The Affect Heuristic

    The affect heuristic is letting how you feel about something decide what you believe about it. You do not weigh a technology's risks against its benefits and arrive at an attitude; you arrive at the…

  • The Affectionless Character

    The affectionless character is John Bowlby's own construct, and the only thing in the 1951 World Health Organization report that he had measured himself. It describes a child who cannot make or…

  • The Algorithm (Framework)

    The Algorithm is a five-step sequence for fixing a process: question every requirement, delete every possible step, simplify and optimise, accelerate cycle time, automate last. Jon McNeill presents…

  • The Amygdala Hijack

    The amygdala hijack is Daniel Goleman's phrase, coined in Emotional Intelligence in 1995, for the moment when a perceived threat triggers an immediate emotional response that overrides deliberate…

  • The Attractiveness Premium

    The attractiveness premium is the systematically better treatment physically attractive people receive across situations that have nothing to do with appearance. It is the applied face of the…

  • The Availability Cascade

    An availability cascade is a self-reinforcing chain that turns a minor event into a national emergency. A small incident gets reported, the reporting produces public alarm, the alarm is itself…

  • The Biology of Belief

    The biology of belief is Bruce Lipton's thesis, set out in his 2005 book of that name, that genes do not determine destiny, that the cell membrane rather than the nucleus is the cell's brain, and…

  • The Blemishing Effect

    The blemishing effect is the finding that a small negative detail can make a product more appealing, but only for people paying little attention, and only when the negative comes after the…

  • The Broken Home

    The broken home was a once-standard research category covering any household in which one or both parents were absent, through death, desertion, separation, divorce or illegitimacy. It ran through…