foundations-behavioral-economics

Behavioral Economics Foundations

16 canonical behavioral-economics and behavior-design primitives for product, pricing, choice design, and retention. Each primitive is domain-agnostic and ethically bounded. Primitives 1–11 cover decision-time effects (framing, anchoring, choice). Primitives 12–16 cover repetition-time effects (habit formation, reinforcement, working memory, contextual retrieval, planned action) — the canonical mechanisms behind retention, behavior change, and the "neuroscience of product" claims commonly made without mechanism. Consumer applied recipes (CRO, business models, content strategy, product management, paid advertising) are the downstream layer — these primitives are the upstream canon.

Ethical obligation: every primitive in this skill is a tool for understanding and influencing human decision-making. Each has a "Misuse boundary" subsection. Read it before applying any technique. The test from Thaler and Sunstein: "Would you be embarrassed if the technique appeared on the front page of a newspaper?" If yes, it is a dark pattern, not a nudge.

When to Apply

Apply behavioral-economics when:

• User-facing decision surface — pricing page, onboarding default, churn flow, retention nudge
• Habit-formation or cue-preservation in redesigns
• Loss-aversion / framing matters and downside is concrete
• Choice architecture — defaults, decoys, ordering, anchoring
• Conversion or activation experiment design where biases are exploitable ethically

Skip and use simpler alternatives when:

• Decision is between two AI systems or backend strategies (no human in the loop) — use foundations-decision-theory
• Causal "did the nudge work?" question — use foundations-causal-inference to measure
• Strategic multi-actor pricing — use foundations-game-theory (Bertrand, Vickrey)
• The proposed pattern requires deceiving the user about real value — fails the ethical gate; redesign, don't nudge
• Audience or market context is unknown — biases are not universal; lift bands won't generalise
• Lift required > 30% — behavioral nudges rarely deliver that; the underlying offer/value-prop is the problem, not framing