14 Crucial Behavioral Psychology Concepts for Product Managers

The 14 concepts are:

• 🔨 Operant Conditioning, 🧠 Classical Conditioning, 🤔 Cognitive Dissonance
• 🔍 Heuristics, 🚫 Inhibiting Pressures, 🧱 Procedural Knowledge, 🕰️ Hick's Law
• 📊 Fogg Behavior Model, 🎁 Variable Rewards, 🤯 Predictably Irrational
• 🔎 Inside View, 🦩 Ostrich Effect, 💡 Spotlight Effect,💡 Pro-Innovation Bias

Behavioral Psychology Product Managers Should Know

As a product manager, understanding the psychology of your target audience is crucial to creating a successful product. One area of psychology that is particularly relevant to product management is behavioral psychology. This field of psychology focuses on understanding how people's behavior is influenced by their environment, and it can provide valuable insights for product managers looking to create products that are tailored to their customer's needs and preferences.

🔨 Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning is a key concept in behavioral psychology that suggests that behavior is shaped by the consequences that follow it.

Opportunity: Use this principle to design products and features that provide positive reinforcement for certain behaviors, encouraging users to continue engaging with the product.

🧠 Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning is another important concept in behavioral psychology that suggests behavior can be learned through the association of a neutral stimulus with a stimulus that naturally evokes a response.

Opportunity: Opportunity lies in using the principle to associate their product with positive emotion, such as happiness, by consistently using happy colors and imagery in their marketing materials.

Source: https://www.verywellmind.com/classical-conditioning-2794859

🤔 Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is a theory that suggests that when people are confronted with information that contradicts their beliefs, they experience psychological discomfort.

Opportunity: Use this principle to create products that align with their target audience's beliefs and values and to communicate with their customers in a way that reduces cognitive dissonance and increases customer satisfaction.

Source: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-cognitive-dissonance-2795012

🔍 Heuristics

Heuristics are mental shortcuts that people use to make decisions quickly and easily.

Opportunity: Use heuristics to design products that are easy to understand and use, and that help customers make decisions quickly and easily. For example, by using familiar icons and symbols, product managers can make it easy for users to understand how to navigate and use a product.

Source: https://mind.help/topic/heuristics/

🚫 Inhibiting Pressures

Inhibiting pressures refer to internal and external factors that discourage or prevent people from taking a particular action.

Opportunity: Use this principle to identify and remove any inhibiting pressures that may be preventing customers from using a product, or to design products that have built-in mechanisms to overcome inhibiting pressures.

🧱 Procedural Knowledge

Procedural knowledge refers to the knowledge of how to perform a particular task or action.

Opportunity: Use this principle to design products that are easy to learn and use, and that help customers acquire procedural knowledge quickly and easily.

🕰️ Hick's Law

Hick's Law states that the time it takes for a person to make a decision increases with the number of options available.

Opportunity: Opportunity lies in presenting a limited number of options to users, making it easier for customers to make decisions quickly and easily.

📊 Fogg Behavior Model

The Fogg Behavior Model states that behavior is a function of motivation, ability, and triggers.

Opportunity: Opportunity lies in using this principle to design products that provide the right triggers at the right time to motivate customers to take a specific action.

Source: https://behaviormodel.org/

🎁 Variable Rewards

Variable rewards refer to the use of unpredictable rewards to keep customers engaged with a product over time.

Opportunity: Opportunity lies in using this principle to design products that provide customers with unpredictable rewards, such as bonuses or special offers, to keep them coming back for more.

Source: https://readingraphics.com/book-summary-hooked-how-to-build-habit-forming-products/

🤯 Predictably Irrational

Our irrational actions are not random or meaningless, but rather follow a pattern.

Opportunity: Use this principle to understand and anticipate the irrational decisions that customers may make and to design products that take these potential biases into account.

🔎 Inside View

The Inside View is a cognitive bias that refers to the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events based on personal experiences.

Opportunity: Use this principle to understand the perspective of their customers and to design products that take into account the customer's personal experiences and biases.

🦩 Ostrich Effect

The Ostrich Effect is a cognitive bias that refers to the tendency to avoid dealing with negative information.

Opportunity: Use this principle to design products that make it easy for customers to access and process negative information, and to communicate with customers in a way that helps them overcome this bias.

Source: https://medium.com/gravityblog/6-the-ostrich-effect-3b79715de71f

💡 Spotlight Effect

The Spotlight Effect is a cognitive bias that refers to the tendency to overestimate the extent to which others are paying attention to us.

Opportunity: Use this principle to design products that make customers feel more in control and less self-conscious and to communicate with customers in a way that helps them overcome this bias.

Source: https://sketchplanations.com/the-effect-effect

💡 Pro-Innovation Bias

Pro-innovation bias refers to the tendency to overestimate the potential benefits of new technologies and innovations.

Opportunity: Use this principle to understand and anticipate the potential biases of their customers, and to design products that take these potential biases into account.

Conclusion

Behavioral psychology is a powerful tool that product managers can use to create products that are tailored to the needs and preferences of their customers. By understanding the key concepts and principles of behavioral psychology, product managers can design products that are easy to use, engaging, and that align with their target audience's beliefs and values. Additionally, by understanding how cognitive biases can influence customer behavior, product managers can design products that take these potential biases into account and provide a better user experience.

Also published here.