Behavioral Psychology and Choice
Examine the unseen mechanisms that drive human action, from conditioning and environmental cues to cognitive nudges. Bridge empirical behaviorism with philosophical questions of agency, self-control, and moral responsibility.
Like Duolingo, but for Behavioral Psychology and Choice. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
21 levels across 3 sections, about 42 minutes end to end, roughly 8 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Engineering Everyday Action, Choice Architecture and Self-Direction, and The Philosophical Foundations of Agency. It assumes you already know the basics.
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Key ideas in Behavioral Psychology and Choice
- Discriminative stimuli signal availability of reinforcement and reliably trigger automated responding
- Environmental cues govern operant behavior far more reliably than internal cognitive resolve
- Removing antecedent cues eliminates the stimulus-response prompt before deliberation can fail
- Hyperbolic discounting devalues future utility sharply over initial delays rather than at a constant rate
- Immediate reinforcers exert disproportionate control over choice compared to distant consequences
- Commitment devices bind future actions to counteract preference reversals over time
- Response effort measures the physical energy and steps required to complete an operant action
- Small increases in physical friction disrupt automatic behavioral momentum and force deliberation
- Higher-friction environments reliably decrease the rate of unwanted target behavior
- Functional assessments classify behavior into escape, attention, tangible, or sensory functions
- The topography or appearance of a behavior does not reveal its maintaining operant reinforcer
- Replacing a habit requires substituting an alternative behavior that serves the exact same function
- Extinction bursts involve a temporary, acute spike in response rate, intensity, and behavioral variability
- Reinforcing the behavior during an extinction burst inadvertently conditions greater persistence
- Spontaneous recovery can occur later even after an extinction burst has successfully subsided
- Unpredictable payout ratios prevent the post-reinforcement pause seen in fixed schedules.
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives Behavioral Psychology and Choice the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
When you want to stay focused, which force actually steers your actions more reliably?
Get it right to open this lesson and 20 more in the app.
Where Behavioral Psychology and Choice takes you
- 1
Engineering Everyday Action
- Auditing Antecedents and Consequences
- Schedules, Momentum, and Habit Substitution
- 2
Choice Architecture and Self-Direction
- Navigating Choice Architecture and Nudges
- Acceptance, Defusion, and Value Alignment
- 3
The Philosophical Foundations of Agency
- Determinism, Conditioning, and the Self
- The Ethics of Behavioral Influence
- Existential Freedom and Hierarchical Desires
3 sections · 7 units · 21 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
You pick the voice
Behavioral Psychology and Choice is taught in the The Bestie style: your friend who just gets it. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start Behavioral Psychology and Choice today.
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