
| 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 |
| 7. | 🍰 | Progressive Disclosure | Users are less overwhelmed if they're exposed to complex features 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 |
| 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 |
| 29. | 🚆 | Aesthetic-Usability 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 |
| 35. | 👼 | Halo Effect | People judge things (or people) based on their feelings towards one trait | meaning |
| 36. | ☎️ | Miller’s Law | Users can only keep 7±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 |
| 40. | 🎁 | Reciprocity | People feel the need to reciprocate when they receive something | meaning |
| 41. | 🤝 | Singularity Effect | Users care disproportionately about an individual as compared to a group | 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 |
| 45. | 🎊 | Group Attractiveness Effect | Individual items seem more attractive when presented in a group | meaning |
| 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 |
| 48. | 📮 | Self-Initiated Triggers | Users are more likely to interact with prompts they setup for 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 |
| 58. | 🌓 | Law of Prägnanz | Users interpret ambiguous images in a simpler and more complete form | meaning |
| 59. | 🐘 | Streisand Effect | When trying to censor information ends up increasing awareness of that information | meaning |
| 60. | 🔦 | Spotlight Effect | People tend to believe they are being noticed more than they really are | meaning |
| 61. | 🗓 | Fresh Start Effect | Users are more likely to take action if there's a feeling of new 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 |
| 66. | 👞 | Commitment & 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 |
| 70. | 🥽 | Observer-Expectancy 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. | ⌚️ | Chronoception | People's perception of time is subjective | time |
| 79. | 💳 | Cashless Effect | People spend more when they can't actually see the money | 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 |
| 85. | 🚋 | Bandwagon Effect | Users tend to adopt beliefs in proportion of others who have already done so | time |
| 86. | 🐍 | Second-Order Effect | The consequences of the consequences of actions | time |
| 87. | 🧙♂️ | Barnum-Forer Effect | When you believe generic personality descriptions apply specifically to you. | 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 |
| 95. | 🛍 | Chunking | People remember grouped information better | memory |
| 96. | 📸 | Picture Superiority 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 |
| 101. | 💾 | Recognition Over 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 |

Don’t miss the new ones!
We update the list every few weeks here: https://growth.design/psychology.
Don’t hesitate to share the link with your friends & colleagues who might enjoy it.
—Dan Benoni & Louis-Xavier Lavallée