Confabulation
We often don’t know why we do the things we do, but we are quick to make up a reason we actually believe, even though its not true. Psychologists call this ‘Confabulation’. The falsification of memory in which people fill gaps in recall with fabrications that they believe to be facts. Confabulation is, for example, …
Consumer Confusion
Hybrid effect with multiple underlying causes. Consumer confusion is a state of mind that leads to consumers making imperfect purchasing decisions or lacking confidence in the correctness of their purchasing decisions. Choice Overload (Paradox of Choice) – Occurs when the set of purchasing options becomes overwhelmingly large for a consumer. Similarity – Similarity is where …
Dopamine & Delight
Understanding dopamine’s role in decision making is critical. Humans make decisions, which are far more complicated than other animals, and dopamine is thought to be a key contributor to the relative importance of “gut feeling” over rational thought. Dopamine signals the expected pleasure from future possible events and this signal then informs our choices. Building …
Emotion & Decision Making
When the outcomes of a decision are uncertain, emotions play a role in guiding it. Emotions are the tools we use to simplify the world into heuristics, or general rules of thumb, as they allow our brains to take shortcuts and approximate rational thinking. Fear and anxiety detect risky choices, this is why we need …
Interaction Cost
The interaction cost is the sum of efforts — mental and physical — that the users must deploy in interacting with a site in order to reach their goals. Zero interaction cost and is the holy grail of usability as a field. Most of the time, users have to look around, read, possibly scroll, find …
Mental Accounting
Mental accounting refers to the tendency for people to separate their money into separate accounts based on a variety of subjective criteria, like the source of the money and intent for each account. According to the theory, individuals assign different functions to each asset group, which has an often irrational and detrimental effect on their …