MENTAL MODELS: OWNERSHIP BIAS

WE MORE HIGHLY VALUE GOODS OR SERVICES ONCE WE FEEL LIKE WE OWN THEM.

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How might this apply to your business?

In what ways can people “take ownership” on your site or with your experience? In competitive environments, people are more likely to take actions to protect things already in their possession. In some contexts, you can encourage people to provide personal data by associating default values with a person’s online identity. If switching systems is your goal, beware that people may value their current choice more than they should.

See also: Loss Aversion, Autonomy, Status Quo Bias, Framing

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In the whirl of our day-to-day interactions, it’s all too easy to forget the nuances that distinguish great teams, great cultures, and great products/services.

Mental Model Flash Cards bring together insights from psychology into an easy reference and brainstorming tool. Each card describes one insight into human behavior and suggests ways to apply this to your teams as well as the design of your products and services.

Mental Models: Certainty Bias

WE CRAVE CERTAINTY AND MORE LIKELY TO TAKE ACTION IF SPECIFIC INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE.

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How might this apply to great teams and cultures?

Should my team structure be fixed or variable? Should my funding be fixed or variable? Should the plan reflect fixed expectations or variable possibilities? The reality is, it’s neither one of those isolated notions, but rather both of them enabling organization’s performance in concert with each other.

How might this apply to great products?

Ambiguity can trigger a threat response resulting in anxiety. Used in small doses — such as a curious challenge — mild uncertainty can focus attention (especially where people have developed routines). But ambiguity may also lead to inaction: people are less likely to act on vague information.

Consider

What information do you provide to help people make decisions? Are you intentionally creating an environment of certainty or uncertainty?

See Also

Framing, Anchoring & Adjustment, Chunking, Story, Sequencing, Limited Choice, Curiosity


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In the whirl of our day-to-day interactions, it’s all too easy to forget the nuances that distinguish great teams, great cultures, and great products/services.

Mental Model Flash Cards bring together insights from psychology into an easy reference and brainstorming tool. Each card describes one insight into human behavior and suggests ways to apply this to your teams as well as the design of your products and services.

Mental Models: Limited Access

WE NATURALLY DESIRE THINGS THAT ARE PERCEIVED AS EXCLUSIVE OR BELONGING TO A SELECT FEW.

How might this apply to great teams and cultures?

Limited support and access to the right networks manifests as gender or minority bias. Similarly, in merger and acquisitions, when information is sensitive and at a minimum, people are included only on a need-to-know basis. This can put an added strain of stress and anxiety on those not included.

How might this apply to great products?

“Private beta” was once a powerful tool for creating interest—and still can be when there is enough commotion. But don’t stop there: Games use levels to create exclusivity and reward proficiency. Some sites or areas of a site can be for members only (or those who have “earned” access). “Access” can also refer to acquiring the use of features or tools that aren’t available by default.

Consider

How does inclusion and exclusion of various population segments impact your work?

See Also

Status, Reputation, Scarcity, Value Attribution, Delighters, Story

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In the whirl of our day-to-day interactions, it’s all too easy to forget the nuances that distinguish great teams, great cultures, and great products/services.

Mental Model Flash Cards bring together insights from psychology into an easy reference and brainstorming tool. Each card describes one insight into human behavior and suggests ways to apply this to your teams as well as the design of your products and services.

MENTAL MODEL: LIMITED DURATION

GIVEN A CHOICE BETWEEN ACTION AND INACTION, A LIMITED TIME TO RESPOND INCREASES THE LIKELIHOOD THAT PEOPLE WILL PARTICIPATE.

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How might this apply to your business?
While commonly used to promote purchasing behaviors, limited durations can also be used to shape day-to-day behaviors. Set limited times when certain actions can be taken. Make rewards available at specific times or have options that disappear if no action is taken within a specific period of time.

See also: Loss Periodic Events, Loss Aversion, Reputation, Status, Achievements, Feedback Loops, Scarcity, Self-Expression

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In the whirl of our day-to-day interactions, it’s all too easy to forget the nuances that distinguish great teams, great cultures, and great products/services.

Mental Model Flash Cards bring together insights from psychology into an easy reference and brainstorming tool. Each card describes one insight into human behavior and suggests ways to apply this to your teams as well as the design of your products and services.

Mental Models: Competition

WHEN SHARING THE SAME ENVIRONMENT, WE’LL STRIVE TO ATTAIN THINGS THAT CANNOT BE SHARED.

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How might this apply to great teams and cultures?

Why do successful organizations often move in new directions and then fail? Organizations that have survived a history of competition adapt to their environment. But adapting for one context makes moving into new contexts more difficult. Managers who've experienced success with competition develop a biased assessment of their organization's dynamic capabilities.

How might this apply to great products?

How might people compete for attention and/or resources within your system? While easily abused, competition remains a great mechanism to provide incentives for self-improvement. Depending on your objectives, competition can be among individuals or among groups. If used among individuals, be careful about recognizing one person at the expense of the group.

Consider

Creating the right company culture is critical when building a company that your employees, customers and shareholders love. How does your group and your company interpret competition uniquely?

See Also

Status, Reputation, Ownership Bias, Loss Aversion, Feedback Loops, Shaping, Social Proof

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In the whirl of our day-to-day interactions, it’s all too easy to forget the nuances that distinguish great teams, great cultures, and great products/services.

Mental Model Flash Cards bring together insights from psychology into an easy reference and brainstorming tool. Each card describes one insight into human behavior and suggests ways to apply this to your teams as well as the design of your products and services.


Mental Models: Chunking

Information grouped into familiar, manageable units is more easily understood and recalled.

How might this apply to great teams and cultures?

Chunking is a tool for getting around the bottleneck of short-term memory. The average person can only manipulate seven pieces of information in short-term memory, at a time. So, we try to keep our presentations concise, our recommendations in groups of three. The more a person has to learn in a shorter period of time, the more difficult it is to process that information.

How might this apply to great products?

Breaking down long lists (actions, content items, bullet points) into smaller groups makes that information easier to understand and recall. In terms of learned behaviors, we mentally “chunk” or categorize the details of routine events such as getting ready in the morning or thinking about the priorities of our day.

Consider

What are the mental routines people develop—on your site or elsewhere in your organization—to respond to specific situations many reveal areas for improvement?

See Also

Proximity, Uniform Connectedness, Status Quo Bias, Shaping, Sequencing, Familiarity Bias

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In the whirl of our day-to-day interactions, it’s all too easy to forget the nuances that distinguish great teams, great cultures, and great products/services.

Mental Model Flash Cards bring together insights from psychology into an easy reference and brainstorming tool. Each card describes one insight into human behavior and suggests ways to apply this to your teams as well as the design of your products and services.

 

Mental Models: An Overview

increasing the quality of our thinking

A mental model is an explanation of someone’s thought process about how something works in the real world. It is a representation of the surrounding world, the relationships between its various parts and a person’s intuitive perception about his or her own acts and their consequences.

If used responsibly, mental models can inform marketing, product design, and influence technology. If left unchecked, mental models can turn into foibles or minor weaknesses or eccentricities in our character.

Artificial intelligence and predictive data will continue to advance, enabling exponential growth. In AI and machine learning programs, discrimination is caused by data. This “algorithmic bias” occurs when AI and computing systems act not in objective fairness, but according to the prejudices that exist with the people who formulated, cleaned and structured their data. This is not inherently harmful – human bias can be as simple as preferring red to blue – but warning signs have started to appear.

A research team at the University of California Berkeley distinguished pre-existing biases in training data from the technical biases that arise from the tools and algorithms that power these AI systems and from the emergent biases that result from human interactions with them.

Ultimately, the solutions we embrace (whether technically or process-oriented) are only as good as the data it is trained to analyze. How we assess problems includes pre-existing (human) biases. These impact us on an individual and societal level. This kind of bias was found in a risk assessment software known as COMPAS. Courtroom judges used it to forecast which criminals were most likely to offend. When news organization ProPublica compared COMPAS risk assessments for 10,000 people arrested in one county in Florida with data showing which ones went on to re-offend, it discovered that when the algorithm was right, its decision making was fair. But when the algorithm was wrong, people of color were almost twice as likely to be labeled a higher risk, yet they did not re-offend.

Gaining insight to our mental models are how we understand the world. Not only do they shape what we think and how we understand but they shape the connections and opportunities that we see. Mental models help make the complex simple. complexity, why we consider some things more relevant than others, and how we reason.

A mental model is just that…a model. It’s a tool that enables us to make an abstract representation of a complex issue. Models help our brains filter the details of the world so we can focus on the relevant details of an issue.

Photo by Todd Quackenbush

Photo by Todd Quackenbush

A path toward better thinking

The quality of our thinking is proportional to the models we are aware of, and our ability to apply them correctly in a situation. The more models you know, the bigger your toolbox. The more models you apply, the more likely you are to see reality with greater clarity and make better decisions. When it comes to improving your ability to make decisions variety (and volume) matters.

Most of us, however, are specialists. Instead of a latticework of mental models, we have a few from our discipline–a few “rules of thumb.” Each specialist sees something different.

When you look at a forest, do you focus on:

  • the ecosystem? You might be a botanist.

  • the impact of climate change? You might be an environmentalist.

  • the state of the tree growth? You might be forestry engineer.

  • the value of the land? You might be a business person.

None of these perspectives are wrong. And, none of them see the forest in its entirety. That is the value of cross-disciplinary thinking. Understanding the basics of the other perspectives leads to a more well-rounded understanding of the forest allowing for better initial decisions about managing it. That’s latticework.

By putting these disciplines together in our head, we can gain greater proximity to the problem at hand by seeing it in a three dimensional way. If consider the problem merely from one angle, we’ve got a blind spot. And blind spots can kill you.

Photo by Nicolas Picard

Photo by Nicolas Picard

A Network of Mental Models for “good humaning”

Building your repertoire of mental models will help you make better decisions. Once you know a few, you will start to make connections between them, helping you create a networked understanding of how you operate as a human being. I’ve collected and summarized the ones I’ve found the most useful. You can use them almost like a deck of cards.

One of the reasons I refer to them as “Foibles” is because these biases are universal to us all. They are what make us human. Succumbing to them clouds our view of the world and contributes to making costly mistakes in our relationships, our businesses, and as a society.

I refer to “good humaning” because between learning and integration lies “the journey”, “the struggle”, “the gap.”  Part of our work is learning and re-learning what it means to be a good human or to do “humaning” well, by making better decisions in our relationships, business, and society at large.

Remember: Developing this level of self-awareness about how you and others operate is a lifelong project. Stick with it, and you’ll find that you will see reality more clearly, make better decisions more consistently, and help those you love and care with greater your increased presence.

Mental Models Explained

  1. The Map is not the Territory metaphorically illustrates the differences between belief and reality. The phrase was coined by Alfred Korzybski. Our perception of the world is being generated by our brain and can be considered as a ‘map’ of reality written in neural patterns. Reality exists outside our mind but we can construct models of this ‘territory’ based on what we glimpse through our senses.

  2. Higher Order Thinking moves from the easier and safer anticipation of the immediate results of our actions, to thinking farther ahead and thinking holistically. The first approach ensures we get the same results as everyone else. Second-order thinking requires us to not only consider our actions and their immediate consequences but consider the long game. Failing to think through long term effects can invite crisis and disaster.

  3. Inversion is a common method used in creative ideation sessions, also known as reverse thinking. Instead of following the ‘normal, logical’ direction of a challenge, you turn it around (or an important element in the challenge) and look for opposite ideas.

  4. Insider/Outsider Thinking

More coming!

Mental Models: Visual Imagery

VISION TRUMPS ALL OTHER SENSES AND IS THE MOST DIRECT WAY TO PERCEPTION.

How might this apply to great teams and cultures?

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People can be impacted by the negative stories attached to stereotypes, both through identification, or just labeling others. Stereotypes influence not only hiring, but also performance, appraisals, and feelings of belonging. These biases can be unconsciously triggered with visual imagery that reinforces stereotypes, or by asking people to identify certain characteristics, like race or age. In addition, exposure to positive or negative portrayals of people of a particular identity will unconsciously impact the way that people of that identity perform under pressure. Further research has shown that even background images will affect people’s behavior, both toward others and subconsciously on their own ability to perform.

How might this apply to great products?Are there opportunities to use visuals to create an emotional response or to speed up response time? If you blur all text, does the imagery convey what you want to communicate? Asking “Can a 5 year old understand this?” is a great way to uncover where text can be replaced or reinforced with an image. Use images to elicit emotions, to make literal associations (an icon or avatar) or suggestive associations (see “Priming”).

Consider

Think about the language and imagery used inside your organization for internal communications. Do they highlight inclusion rather than exclusion, and opportunity rather than limitation?

See Also

Aesthetic-Usability Effect, Juxtaposition, Priming, Conceptual Metaphor, Proximity, Uniform Connectedness, Contract, Recognition over Recall, Affect Heuristic

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In the whirl of our day-to-day interactions, it’s all too easy to forget the nuances that distinguish great teams, great cultures, and great products/services.

Mental Model Flash Cards bring together insights from psychology into an easy reference and brainstorming tool. Each card describes one insight into human behavior and suggests ways to apply this to your teams as well as the design of your products and services.

Mental Models: Humor Effect

HUMOROUS ITEMS ARE MORE EASILY REMEMBERED—AND ENJOYED!

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How might this apply to great teams and cultures?

The basic principle of humor is that it is unexpected in some way. In learning contexts, use humor to:

  • Ease new knowledge acquisition and retention

  • Reduce hostility

  • Deflect criticism

  • Relieve tension

  • Improve morale

  • Help communicate difficult messages

How might this apply to your business?

Humor can be a useful tool in the sales person's toolbox, but it must be used with care. When people are relaxed, they trust more and will hence share more personal information, accept 'facts' from others and generally be willing to buy. Humor is a way of relaxing people and can easily put them in a good mood.

Some companies build humor into their entire brand. Delta, SouthWest Airlines, and Virgin are examples of organizations that incorporate humor into their brand. These companies can legitimately make fun of themselves, though they are yet deadly serious about delivering excellent customer experience.

Almost any online test is an opportunity to add humor. But don’t stop there: think about interactions and how they can be made humorous. Just as humor is injected into a conversation, we can easily add humor to hover actions, button clicks, three-step processes and other user actions.

Consider

Humor is a surprisingly useful and subtle way of persuading. How do you incorporate the element of surprise or humor to spark interest in what you are doing?

See Also

Affect Heuristic, Peak-End Rule, Surprise, Delighters

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In the whirl of our day-to-day interactions, it’s all too easy to forget the nuances that distinguish great teams, great cultures, and great products/services.

Mental Model Flash Cards bring together insights from psychology into an easy reference and brainstorming tool. Each card describes one insight into human behavior and suggests ways to apply this to your teams as well as the design of your products and services.