8/5/22, 6:48 PM 🧠Psychology of Design: 106 Cognitive Biases & Principles That Affect Your UX
Name One-Liner Category
1. 👀 Hick's Law More options leads to harder decisions Information
2. 💼 Confirmation Bias People look for evidence that confirms what they think Information
3. 👁 Priming Previous stimuli influence users' decision Information
4. 🚛 Cognitive Load Total amount of mental effort that is required to complete a task Information
5. ⚓️ Anchoring Bias Users rely heavily on the first piece of information they see Information
6. 👉 Nudge Subtle hints can affect users' decisions Information
Users are less overwhelmed if they're exposed to complex features
7. 🍰 Progressive Disclosure
later
Information
8. 🎯 Fitts's Law Large and close elements are easier to interact with Information
9. 🐠 Attentional Bias Users' thoughts filter what they pay attention to Information
10. 💔 Empathy Gap People underestimate how much emotions influence user behaviors Information
11. ⛵️ Visual Anchors Elements used to guide users' eyes Information
12. 🌶 Von Restorff Effect People notice items that stand out more Information
13. 🎖 Visual Hierarchy The order in which people perceive what they see Information
14. 🔭 Selective Attention People filter out things from their environment when in focus Information
15. ✈️ Survivorship Bias People neglect things that don't make it past a selection process Information
16. 🕶 Banner Blindness Users tune out the stuff they get repeatedly exposed to Information
17. 🍒 Juxtaposition Elements that are close and similar are perceived as a single unit Information
18. 🚦 Signifiers Elements that communicate what they will do Information
19. 🎭 Contrast Users' attention is drawn to higher visual weights Information
20. 🚨 External Trigger When the information on what to do next is within the prompt itself Information
21. 🕺 Decoy Effect Create a new option that's easy to discard Information
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8/5/22, 6:48 PM 🧠Psychology of Design: 106 Cognitive Biases & Principles That Affect Your UX
Name One-Liner Category
22. 🎪 Centre-Stage Effect People tend to choose the middle option in a set of items Information
23. 🖼 Framing The way information is presented affects how users make decisions Information
24. 🍣 Law of Proximity Elements close to each other are usually considered related Information
25. 🍬 Tesler's Law If you simplify too much, you'll transfer some complexity to the users Information
26. 🧨 Spark Effect Users are more likely to take action when the effort is small Information
27. 🥏 Feedback Loop When users take action, feedback communicates what happened Information
28. 😻 Expectations Bias People tend to be influenced by their own expectations Information
Aesthetic-Usability
29. 🚆 Effect
People perceive designs with great aesthetics as easier to use Information
30. 👥 Social Proof Users adapt their behaviors based on what others do Meaning
31. 🦄 Scarcity People value things more when they're in limited supply Meaning
32. 💭 Curiosity Gap Users have a desire to seek out missing information Meaning
33. 🖲 Mental Model Users have a preconceived opinion of how things work Meaning
34. 👨👩👧👦 Familiarity Bias People prefer familiar experiences Meaning
People judge things (or people) based on their feelings towards one
35. 👼 Halo Effect
trait
Meaning
36. ☎️ Miller’s Law Users can only keep 5±2 items in their working memory Meaning
37. 🍱 Unit Bias One unit of something feels like the optimal amount Meaning
38. 🌊 Flow State Being fully immersed and focused on a task Meaning
39. 🕹 Skeuomorphism Users adapt more easily to things that look like real-world objects Meaning
Users care disproportionately about an individual as compared to a
40. 🤝 Singularity Effect
group
Meaning
41. 🎁 Reciprocity People feel the need to reciprocate when they receive something Meaning
42. 👑 Authority Bias Users attribute more importance to the opinion of an authority figure Meaning
43. 🏺 Pseudo-Set Framing Tasks that are part of a group are more tempting to complete Meaning
44. 🎰 Variable Reward People especially enjoy unexpected rewards Meaning
Group Attractiveness
45. 🎊 Effect
Individual items seem more attractive when presented in a group Meaning
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8/5/22, 6:48 PM 🧠Psychology of Design: 106 Cognitive Biases & Principles That Affect Your UX
Name One-Liner Category
46. 🚰 Curse of Knowledge Not realizing that people don't have the same level of knowledge Meaning
47. 🎉 Aha! moment When new users first realize the value of your product Meaning
Users are more likely to interact with prompts they setup for
48. 📮 Self-Initiated Triggers
themselves
Meaning
49. ✏️ Survey Bias Users tend to skew survey answers towards what's socially acceptable Meaning
50. 🎭 Cognitive Dissonance It's painful to hold two opposing ideas in our mind Meaning
51. 🥅 Goal Gradient Effect Motivation increases as users get closer to their goal Meaning
52. 💫 Feedforward When users know what to expect before they take action Meaning
53. 💈 Occam’s Razor Simple solutions are often better than the more complex ones Meaning
54. 🎗 Noble Edge Effect Users tend to prefer socially responsible companies Meaning
55. 🧿 Hawthorne Effect Users change their behavior when they know they are being observed Meaning
56. 🏒 Hindsight Bias People overestimate their ability to predict outcomes after the fact Meaning
57. 🎏 Law of Similarity Users perceive a relationship between elements that look similar Meaning
Users interpret ambiguous images in a simpler and more complete
58. 🌓 Law of Prägnanz
form
Meaning
When trying to censor information ends up increasing awareness of
59. 🐘 Streisand Effect
that information
Meaning
60. 🔦 Spotlight Effect People tend to believe they are being noticed more than they really are Meaning
Users are more likely to take action if there's a feeling of new
61. 🗓 Fresh Start Effect
beginnings
Meaning
62. 🧗♂️ Labor Illusion People value things more when they see the work behind them Time
63. 🚶♂️ Default Bias Users tend not to change an established behavior Time
64. 🏦 Investment Loops When users invest themselves, they're more likely to come back Time
65. 🕯 Loss Aversion People prefer to avoid losses more than earning equivalent gains Time
Commitment &
66. 👞 Consistency
Users tend to be consistent with their previous actions Time
67. 🏝 Sunk Cost Effect Users are reluctant to pull out of something they're invested in. Time
68. 🌛 Decision Fatigue Making a lot of decisions lowers users' ability to make rational ones Time
69. 🌋 Reactance Users are less likely to adopt a behavior when they feel forced Time
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8/5/22, 6:48 PM 🧠Psychology of Design: 106 Cognitive Biases & Principles That Affect Your UX
Name One-Liner Category
Observer-Expectancy
70. 🥽 Effect
When researchers' biases influence the participants of an experiment Time
71. 🌱 Weber's Law Users adapt better to small incremental changes Time
72. 🔨 Law of the Instrument If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail Time
73. 🍭 Temptation Bundling Hard tasks are less scary when coupled with something users desire Time
74. 🎈 Parkinson’s Law The time required to complete a task will take as much time as allowed Time
75. 🎩 Dunning-Kruger Effect People tend to overestimate their skills when they don't know much Time
76. 🌤 Affect Heuristic People's current emotions cloud and influence their judgment Time
77. 📉 Hyperbolic Discounting People tend to prioritize immediate benefits over bigger future gains Time
78. 💳 Cashless Effect People spend more when they can't actually see the money Time
79. ⌚️ Chronoception People's perception of time is subjective Time
80. 🌚 Self-serving bias People take credits for positive events and blame others if negative Time
81. 🥬 Pareto Principle Roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes Time
82. 🔍 Discoverability The ease with which users can discover your features Time
83. 🔫 Backfire Effect When people's convictions are challenged, their beliefs get stronger Time
84. 🌈 False Consensus Effect People overestimate how much other people agree with them Time
Users tend to adopt beliefs in proportion of others who have already
85. 🚋 Bandwagon Effect
done so
Time
When you believe generic personality descriptions apply specifically to
86. 🧙♂️ Barnum-Forer Effect
you.
Time
87. 🐍 Second-Order Effect The consequences of the consequences of actions Time
88. 🛋 IKEA Effect When user partially create something, they value it way more Time
89. 🧚♂️ Planning Fallacy People tend to underestimate how much time a task will take Time
90. 🏕 Provide Exit Points Invite users to leave your app at the right moment Memory
91. 🎢 Peak-End Rule People judge an experience by its peak and how it ends. Memory
92. 👅 Sensory Appeal Users engage more with things appealing to multiple senses Memory
93. 🧩 Zeigarnik Effect People remember incomplete tasks better than completed ones Memory
94. 🧤 Endowment Effect Users value something more if they feel it's theirs Memory
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8/5/22, 6:48 PM 🧠Psychology of Design: 106 Cognitive Biases & Principles That Affect Your UX
Name One-Liner Category
95. 🛍 Chunking People remember grouped information better Memory
Picture Superiority
96. 📸 Effect
People remember pictures better than words Memory
97. 📌 Method of Loci People remember things more when they're associated with a location Memory
98. 🧭 Shaping Incrementally reinforcing actions to get closer to a target behavior Memory
99. 💚 Delighters People remember more unexpected and playful pleasures Memory
100. 💛 Internal Trigger When users are prompted to take action based on a memory Memory
Recognition Over
101. 💾 Recall
It's easier to recognize things than recall them from memory Memory
102. 🏰 Storytelling Effect People remember stories better than facts alone Memory
103. 👹 Negativity Bias Users recall negative events more than positive ones Memory
104. ⏰ Availability Heuristic Users favor recent and available information over past information Memory
105. 🌌 Spacing Effect People learn more effectively when study sessions are spaced out Memory
106. 🏁 Serial Position Effect It's easier for users to recall the first and last items of a list Memory
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—Dan Benoni & Louis-Xavier Lavallée
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