Seven psychology principles for Product Managers
Psychological principles refer to the fundamental concepts and theories that help explain and understand human behavior, cognition, and emotion. These principles are derived from the field of psychology, which is the scientific study of the mind and behavior.
Product managers can benefit significantly from paying attention to psychological principles for several reasons:
A. User Understanding: Understanding how users think, feel, and behave is crucial for creating products that resonate with them. Psychological principles provide insights into user motivations, decision-making processes, and preferences, helping product managers design products that meet the needs and expectations of their target audience.
B. User Experience (UX) Design: Psychological principles play a central role in UX design. Concepts such as usability, cognitive load, and visual perception guide product managers in creating interfaces that are intuitive, user-friendly, and aesthetically pleasing. By applying these principles, product managers can enhance the overall user experience.
C. Behavioral Economics: Behavioral economics incorporates psychological insights into economic decision-making. Product managers can leverage principles from this field to influence user behavior, such as encouraging certain actions, improving user engagement, and increasing conversion rates.
D. Decision-Making and Cognitive Biases: Understanding cognitive biases helps product managers recognize patterns of irrational decision-making. By being aware of biases like confirmation bias, anchoring, and loss aversion, product managers can design features and communication strategies that guide users toward more informed and positive decisions.
E. Motivation and Engagement: Psychological principles related to motivation and engagement provide valuable insights into what drives individuals to use products consistently. Product managers can design features and functionalities that tap into users’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, fostering sustained engagement with the product.
F. Communication Strategies: Effective communication is essential in product management. Psychological principles help product managers craft messages that resonate with users, consider cultural influences on communication, and tailor communication strategies based on the target audience’s psychological preferences.
G. Feedback and Iteration: Psychological principles play a role in interpreting user feedback. Understanding how users perceive and react to product changes helps product managers iterate and improve products more effectively. Additionally, principles related to user feedback, such as the Dunning-Kruger effect, can guide how feedback is collected and interpreted.
H. User Empathy: Empathy is a crucial trait for product managers. Psychological principles contribute to developing a deeper understanding of users’ emotions, challenges, and needs. This empathy, in turn, informs product decisions and ensures that the product aligns with users’ experiences.
I. Market Research and Segmentation: Psychological principles play a role in market research by helping product managers segment users based on psychological characteristics and behaviors. This segmentation allows for more targeted and personalized product development and marketing strategies.
Now let us go through a few famous psychological principles and understand how they can be implied in a PM to achieve a desired end objective.
- Sunk Cost Fallacy:
The sunk cost fallacy is a cognitive bias where individuals continue investing time, money, or resources into a project or decision because they have already invested heavily in it, even if continuing the investment is not the best course of action.
Essentially, people let past investments influence their current decisions instead of objectively evaluating the situation.
Understanding the sunk cost fallacy is crucial for product managers to make informed decisions and design products that align with user needs and market dynamics. By recognizing when users might be prone to the sunk cost fallacy, product managers can implement features or strategies to mitigate its impact and guide users toward more rational decision-making.
A few possible scenarios:
- Microsoft Office 365:
Example: A user subscribes to the full suite of Microsoft Office 365 but finds that she primarily uses only a few applications.
Product Design Response: Microsoft could introduce a feature that analyzes user activity and suggests a customized subscription plan based on actual usage patterns, helping users optimize their investment.
- Fitness Tracker Apps:
Example: A user invests in an advanced fitness tracker but gradually becomes less active and engaged with the device.
Product Design Response: The app could send personalized notifications, suggesting new workout routines, challenges, or health goals to re-engage the user. It could also offer features to repurpose the tracker for other health-related activities.
In each example, the product manager recognizes situations where users might fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy and designs features to prompt reevaluation, ensuring that users make decisions aligned with their current preferences and needs rather than being influenced solely by past investments.
2. Center-Stage Effect:
The center-stage effect is a cognitive bias where individuals tend to perceive themselves as more central to events than they actually are. It’s a tendency to overestimate one’s importance or influence in a given situation. This bias can impact decision-making and perceptions of control, often leading people to believe they have more impact on events than they truly do.
Understanding the center-stage effect is crucial for product managers in designing products that align with users’ perceptions of control and importance. By recognizing when users may exhibit this bias, product managers can implement features or strategies that enhance users’ sense of centrality and control, leading to a more positive user experience.
A few possible scenarios:
- GitHub:
Example: A developer contributes to a collaborative project but feels their code changes are not getting enough attention.
Product Design Response: GitHub could introduce features that showcase individual code contributions more prominently, perhaps through a personalized activity feed or badges for notable contributions, fostering a sense of recognition and centrality.
- Fitness Tracking Apps:
Example: A user completes a workout but feels their achievements are not adequately acknowledged.
Product Design Response: The fitness app could provide personalized summaries of workouts, highlighting milestones and achievements. Additionally, it could offer social sharing features to showcase fitness accomplishments to a broader audience, enhancing the user’s sense of centrality in their fitness journey.
In these examples, the product manager leverages an understanding of the center-stage effect to design features that align with users’ perceptions of their own importance and influence, ultimately enhancing the user experience and engagement with the product.
3. Micro-commitment:
Micro-commitments involve obtaining small, incremental agreements or actions from users. Instead of asking for a significant commitment upfront, the strategy is to gain user buy-in gradually through a series of smaller steps. This approach is rooted in the psychology of commitment and consistency, where individuals are more likely to agree to larger requests after they have already committed to smaller ones.
Product managers can leverage micro-commitments to guide users through a series of small, manageable steps, increasing the likelihood of obtaining a larger commitment or engagement. This strategy is effective in reducing user friction, building trust, and encouraging continued interaction with the product.
A few possible scenarios:
- Amazon Shopping Cart:
Example: Amazon prompts users to add items to their shopping cart before proceeding to checkout.
Product Design Response: Rather than requiring users to make an immediate purchase decision, the platform encourages micro-commitments by allowing users to add items to their cart first. This builds a sense of ownership over the selected items, making users more likely to proceed to checkout.
- Tinder Swiping Feature:
Example: Tinder uses a swiping mechanism to indicate interest in potential matches.
Product Design Response: Rather than requiring users to make a definitive decision on a potential match upfront, Tinder’s swiping feature allows users to make quick, low-stakes decisions. This micro-commitment approach increases user engagement and encourages continued use of the app.
In each example, the product manager strategically incorporates micro-commitments into the product design, gradually guiding users toward deeper engagement and larger commitments. This approach aligns with user psychology and helps build a positive user experience.
4. Peak-end Bias:
The peak-end bias is a cognitive phenomenon where people tend to judge and remember an experience based on its most intense (peak) moment and how it ends. The overall experience, whether positive or negative, is often disproportionately influenced by these peak moments and the way the experience concludes.
Product managers can strategically design and optimize the peak moments and endings of user interactions to positively influence the overall perception of the product. By focusing on creating memorable and satisfying peak and end experiences, product managers can leave a lasting positive impression on users.
A few possible scenarios:
Disney Theme Parks:
- Example: Visitors to a Disney theme park experience various attractions and activities.
- Product Design Response: Disney strategically designs each ride and attraction to provide a memorable peak experience, often with thrilling moments. The end of the visit is carefully curated with events such as parades, fireworks, or character interactions, creating a positive and memorable conclusion to the theme park experience.
Spotify Wrapped Campaign:
- Example: Spotify’s annual “Wrapped” campaign summarizes a user’s year in music.
- Product Design Response: Spotify leverages the peak-end bias by creating visually engaging and personalized summaries of a user’s music listening habits. The campaign concludes with a positive reflection on the user’s music preferences and the shared experience with the Spotify platform.
In each example, the product manager strategically considers and enhances the peak and end moments of user interactions, leveraging the peak-end bias to create more positive and memorable overall experiences with the product.
5. Reward Variability:
Reward variability is a psychological concept that suggests variable and unpredictable rewards can be more motivating and engaging than constant and predictable rewards. It is rooted in the idea that the uncertainty of receiving a reward, coupled with occasional larger or unexpected rewards, can stimulate greater user engagement and satisfaction.
Product managers can strategically incorporate variability in the rewards offered by their products, creating a more dynamic and engaging user experience. By introducing surprises, occasional larger rewards, or unexpected bonuses, product managers can maintain user interest, increase motivation, and foster a sense of excitement.
A few possible scenarios:
- Mobile Gaming Apps — PUBG “Loot Boxes”:
Example: In many mobile games, players can purchase or earn “loot boxes” containing random in-game items or rewards.
Product Design Response: Game developers use reward variability by offering unpredictable rewards in these loot boxes. Players are motivated to continue engaging with the game to discover what valuable items or bonuses they might receive, fostering sustained interest.
- Credit Card Cashback Programs:
Example: A user uses a credit card with a cashback rewards program.
Product Design Response: The credit card company introduces variability by occasionally offering bonus cashback rewards, limited-time promotions, or exclusive partner deals. This unpredictability encourages users to use the credit card more frequently, hoping to maximize their rewards through occasional surprises.
In each example, the product manager strategically incorporates reward variability to create a more dynamic and engaging user experience, ultimately contributing to increased user motivation and retention.
6. Pro-Innovation Bias:
Pro-innovation bias is a cognitive bias where individuals have a general preference for new and innovative solutions over existing ones, regardless of their actual effectiveness. It reflects a positive inclination toward adopting novel ideas and technologies. Product managers can leverage this bias to design better products by emphasizing and highlighting the innovative aspects of their offerings, even if incremental improvements may be more effective.
Strategically positioning the products as innovative and cutting-edge PM can appeal to users’ pro-innovation bias. This involves showcasing new features, technologies, or design elements to capture attention and generate positive perceptions.
A few possible scenarios:
- Apple iPhone Launches:
Example: Apple introduces new iPhone models with incremental upgrades.
Product Design Response: Apple emphasizes the innovative aspects of each new iPhone, such as advanced camera technology, improved processing power, or cutting-edge design. The marketing strategy plays into the pro-innovation bias, positioning each model as a significant leap forward in technology.
- Google Chrome Browser Updates:
Example: Google regularly releases updates to the Chrome browser with performance improvements and new features.
Product Design Response: Google frames each Chrome update as an innovation, showcasing new functionalities, security enhancements, and improved speed. This approach aligns with the pro-innovation bias, encouraging users to perceive Chrome as a continually evolving and innovative browser.
7. Cognitive Dissonance:
Cognitive dissonance is a psychological theory that describes the discomfort or tension that arises when individuals hold conflicting beliefs, attitudes, or values. To resolve this discomfort, people may alter their beliefs, seek additional information, or change their behavior to bring their thoughts and actions into alignment.
Product managers can leverage an understanding of cognitive dissonance to design better products by addressing potential conflicts or inconsistencies in users’ experiences, perceptions, or decision-making processes.
Product managers can identify and address sources of cognitive dissonance in user interactions to enhance the overall user experience and satisfaction. This may involve providing clear and consistent information, minimizing conflicting design elements, or guiding users through decision-making processes to reduce discomfort.
A few possible scenarios:
- LinkedIn Premium Subscriptions:
Example: A LinkedIn Premium subscriber questions the value of the subscription after a few months.
Product Design Response: LinkedIn could address cognitive dissonance by providing personalized reports on the benefits gained from the Premium subscription, such as increased profile visibility, additional InMail credits, or insights into profile views. This helps users perceive ongoing value and justifies their subscription.
- Online Learning Platforms:
Example: A user enrolls in an online course but faces challenges in completing it.
Product Design Response: The platform can introduce progress tracking, personalized study plans, and peer engagement features to address cognitive dissonance. By assisting users in aligning their educational goals with achievable milestones, the platform helps reduce discomfort and supports course completion.
In summary, paying attention to psychological principles empowers product managers to create products that not only meet functional requirements but also resonate with users on a psychological and emotional level.
By understanding the intricacies of human behavior, product managers can design products that are more intuitive, engaging, and likely to succeed in the market.
Happy learning!
