Concepts (page 72)

The Big Mistake is Robert Cialdini's name for normalising an unwanted behaviour while trying to discourage it. A message that laments how many people do the thing also tells the reader that doing it…

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 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 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…

The burden of disclosure is the finding that telling a listener about an adviser's stake can make the listener more likely to follow the conflicted advice while trusting it less. Sunita Sah, George…

The bystander effect is the finding that the more people present at an emergency, the less likely any one of them is to help. John Darley and Bibb Latané established it experimentally in 1968 and…

The cashless effect is the tendency to spend more when paying with cards, phones or vouchers than with cash. A 2024 meta-analysis of 71 papers found it real but small. It has weakened over time and…

The causal reversal thesis is Timandra Harkness's argument that personalising technology did not shrink our sense of who we are; a sense of self that had already shrunk is why personalising…

The challenge-skill channel is the claim that optimal experience arrives where perceived challenge matches perceived skill: too hard and you are anxious, too easy and you are bored, and in the band…

The check-in is the reflexive urge to re-check a channel for no reason other than the possibility that something new is there. An inbox, a feed, a notification badge. The framing is Tim Wu's, in The…

The cocktail party effect is the ability to follow one voice among many while still catching personally important sounds, such as your own name, from a conversation you were ignoring. Two findings…

The cognitive model proposes that a thought sits between an event and a feeling, that the thought can be examined, and that the examination is where the leverage lives. Albert Ellis took the idea…