A law earns its place by clarifying how a pattern is produced, not only by naming it.
DOMAIN 0215 PUBLISHED GUIDES
Mind & Behavior
Regularities in perception, cognition, judgment, choice, learning, and social behavior.
CENTRAL QUESTION
How do minds detect, decide, learn, and act?
- Working scale
- Sensation to society
- Primary lens
- Experiments + behavioral evidence
15Published
04Defined subfields
FULLSource standard
ENEditorial language
SUBCATEGORY MAP
The field at a glance.
Each subfield has a distinct object of study. Published areas are active now; planned areas show how the collection will grow.
01
Perception
PublishedHow sensory systems turn physical signals into experience.
02
Cognitive Biases
PublishedSystematic departures from ideal judgment and memory.
03
Decision Making
PublishedChoice under uncertainty, trade-offs, and limited information.
04
Social Behavior
PublishedBehavior shaped by groups, norms, identity, and interaction.
PUBLISHED GUIDES
In Mind & Behavior
Every guide includes meaning, mechanism, applications, limitations, related concepts, and traceable references.
Perception006
Psychophysical regularity
Weber's Law
The smallest detectable change in a stimulus is often proportional to the starting intensity, not a fixed absolute amount.
Perception010
Psychomotor performance model
Fitts's Law
Movement time, target distance and width, speed-accuracy trade-offs, and pointing-device evaluation.
Social Behavior012
Social-network capacity hypothesis
Dunbar's Number
Active relationships, layered social networks, time budgets, cognitive constraints, cultural variation, and contested evidence.
Perception024
Classical psychophysical model
Fechner's Law
Equal steps in subjective sensation were proposed to correspond to equal ratios, not equal additions, in physical stimulus intensity.
Perception028
Choice reaction-time model
Hick-Hyman Law
Choice reaction time often increases approximately linearly with the information uncertainty of the alternatives, not simply with their raw count.
Cognitive Biases032
Judgment bias under uncertainty
Anchoring Effect
Numerical estimates are often pulled toward an initial reference value, even when the anchor is arbitrary or only weakly informative.
Cognitive Biases039
Self-assessment calibration pattern
Dunning-Kruger Effect
Lower performers can show larger positive errors in self-assessment, but the size and mechanism of the pattern depend on measurement, information, task, and statistical design.
Decision Making046
Reference-dependent valuation hypothesis
Loss Aversion
Changes below a reference point can carry greater psychological weight than equally sized changes above it, under specified tasks and elicitation methods.
Perception049
Task-dependent arousal-performance hypothesis
Yerkes-Dodson Law
Performance can vary nonlinearly with arousal, but curve shape and optimum depend on task difficulty, measurement, motivation, and the source of arousal.
Perception061
Familiarity-preference effect
Mere-Exposure Effect
Repeated, unreinforced exposure to a stimulus can increase average liking or positive evaluation, especially when the stimulus is initially unfamiliar and exposure remains moderate.
Social Behavior066
Group-performance loss effect
Ringelmann Effect
As a group becomes larger, average individual output on a collective task can decline because of coordination losses, reduced identifiability, and motivational changes.
Cognitive Biases074
Experimental memory regularity
Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve
Without retrieval or relearning, accessible memory often falls rapidly after learning and then declines more slowly.
Cognitive Biases075
Retrospective-evaluation heuristic
Peak-End Rule
Retrospective evaluations of an episode can be disproportionately influenced by its most intense moment and its ending.
Social Behavior076
Social-psychological effect
Bystander Effect
The presence of other observers can reduce an individual's likelihood or speed of helping when responsibility and interpretation are ambiguous.
Social Behavior077
Expectation-mediated performance effect
Pygmalion Effect
Expectations held by teachers, leaders, or evaluators can alter opportunities and feedback, contributing to later performance differences.
CROSS-DOMAIN LINKS
No field stands alone.
These connections show where the domain borrows methods, mechanisms, or evidence from the rest of the library.
Scientific status, operating range, evidence quality, and common misuse stay visible.
Original publications, official records, and serious scholarship take priority.