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Anthropomorphism is interpreting an animal, object, system, or natural event through human intentions, emotions, or social traits.
Choice overload is the phenomenon whereby having too many options can make deciding harder, reduce satisfaction with the chosen option, and sometimes prevent choosing at all. More choice is not monotonically better: beyond a point, each added option adds comparison cost, anticipated regret, and doubt.
The decoy effect is a shift in preference caused by adding a third option that nobody should choose. The decoy makes one target option look clearly superior by comparison, even though it does not improve that option itself.
The default effect is the tendency to end up with whatever option requires no action. Pre-selected choices are adopted at far higher rates than identical options requiring an active step — one of the largest and most reliable effects in behavioral science, and the workhorse of choice architecture.
Distinction bias is exaggerating the importance of small differences when options are compared side by side, even though the difference would barely matter in use.
The empathy gap is failing to appreciate how strongly a different emotional or bodily state will shape our own or another person's choices. Calm selves underestimate hunger, pain, fear, craving, anger, and stress; hot selves underestimate what calm reflection will want.
The endowment effect is valuing an item more once it is ours than we valued the identical item before owning it. Ownership changes the reference point: giving it up feels like a loss, while acquiring it had felt like a possible gain.
We tend to value things more when we helped make them. The IKEA effect is the extra attachment or willingness to pay that can follow successful assembly, customization, or creation—even when an equivalent finished version would serve just as well.
Impact bias is overestimating how intensely and how long a future event will affect our feelings. We imagine the promotion, breakup, purchase, or rejection in a spotlight, then underestimate adaptation and the rest of life that will quickly compete for attention.
A smaller option can look better when it is judged on its own, then lose as soon as it is placed beside a clearly superior alternative. The less-is-better effect is this preference reversal: people overweight an easy-to-evaluate cue and underweight total value in separate evaluation.
The mere ownership effect is the tendency to evaluate an object more favorably simply because you own it — independent of any transaction. Where the endowment effect concerns what you'd charge to give something up, mere ownership shows that possession alone, even momentary and unchosen, makes things seem better.
Observer expectancy is when an evaluator's expectations quietly shape what participants do, what gets noticed, or how ambiguous results are scored.
Post-purchase rationalization is defending a purchase after the fact so it feels more valuable and less regrettable. It is the consumer version of choice-supportive bias: the receipt turns a debatable option into 'the right choice.'
Unit bias is the tendency to treat one presented unit—a plate, packet, episode, or task—as the natural amount to finish.