🧠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
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.	🤝	Singularity Effect	Users care disproportionately about an individual as compared to a 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
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.	💳	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
85.	🚋	Bandwagon Effect	Users tend to adopt beliefs in proportion of others who have already done so	time
86.	🧙‍♂️	Barnum-Forer Effect	When you believe generic personality descriptions apply specifically to 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
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

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—Dan Benoni & Louis-Xavier Lavallée