THE SCIENCE
20 researchers. 36 criteria. Zero guessing.
Every criterion in the CORXIT Standard traces to published, citable behavioral research — not opinion, not trend, not taste. Tap any name to see their contribution and exactly where it's applied.
THE FIVE STAGES
Every criterion sits in one of five stages.
01
Perception
02
Trust
03
Decision
04
Presentation
05
Action
THE RESEARCH ROSTER
20 researchers. Tap any name.
APPLIED TO: Perception · Stage 01
Kahneman's Nobel-winning research established that human thinking runs on two systems: System One is fast, automatic, and unconscious; System Two is slow and deliberate. Most decisions, including whether to engage with a business, are made by System One before System Two ever gets involved. With longtime collaborator Amos Tversky, Kahneman's work on Prospect Theory also showed people feel the pain of a loss roughly twice as intensely as the pleasure of an equivalent gain — the foundation of loss aversion.
APPLIED TO: Trust · Stage 02
Cialdini's six principles of influence — reciprocity, commitment, social proof, authority, liking, and scarcity — document the specific mechanisms that cause people to say yes. Trust signals have to appear before commitment is requested, not after.
APPLIED TO: Decision · Stage 03
Fogg's Behavior Model states that an action only happens when motivation, ability, and a trigger converge at the same moment. Remove any one, and the action doesn't happen, no matter how strong the others are.
APPLIED TO: Perception & Trust · Stages 01-02
Nielsen's research established that people form their expectations from how most websites work, and that breaking those conventions increases mental effort. His reading-pattern research documents exactly where on a page people actually look first.
APPLIED TO: Perception & Decision · Stages 01 & 03
Miller's famous 1956 finding established that working memory reliably holds only around seven items before things start getting dropped. Past that point, decisions get deferred and people disengage.
APPLIED TO: Decision · Stage 03
Iyengar's well-known research on choice overload showed that how options are sequenced and grouped — not just how many exist — determines whether anyone chooses at all.
APPLIED TO: Trust · Stage 02
Thaler's work on nudges and mental accounting showed that small, well-placed changes in how a choice is presented — defaults, framing, structure — can significantly shift behavior without restricting any option.
APPLIED TO: Presentation · Stage 04
Mehrabian's communication-consistency research established that when what's said and how it looks conflict, how it looks wins. Strong claims on a visually inconsistent page get quietly discounted by that inconsistency.
APPLIED TO: Decision · Stage 03
Gigerenzer's research on fast and frugal heuristics shows people rely on simple mental shortcuts to make good-enough decisions quickly, especially under uncertainty.
APPLIED TO: Presentation · Stage 04
Ekman's research on micro-expressions showed people detect inconsistency between what's said and how it's shown almost instantly, and subconsciously.
APPLIED TO: Presentation · Stage 04
Cooper's goal-directed design principle holds that good design starts from what the visitor is trying to accomplish, not from what the business wants to show off.
APPLIED TO: Perception · Stage 01
Sweller's Cognitive Load Theory shows comprehension breaks down once mental effort exceeds working memory capacity — even when every individual piece of information is accurate.
APPLIED TO: Perception · Stage 01
Bjork's research on desirable difficulties shows some effort aids memory — but effort spent decoding a confusing layout only causes people to give up, not to remember more.
APPLIED TO: Presentation · Stage 04
Norman established the idea of affordances and signifiers — that things should make their correct use obvious through design alone. When a page deviates from expected patterns, it creates friction that erodes trust before a customer can say why.
APPLIED TO: Decision · Stage 03
Weinschenk's applied research translates lab-level behavioral findings into consistent, measurable patterns in how real people act online.
APPLIED TO: Trust & Decision · Stages 02-03
Simonson's research on context-dependent choice, including the compromise effect, shows people rarely judge an option alone — they judge it against whatever else is presented next to it.
APPLIED TO: Perception · Stage 01
Lindgaard's Carleton University research found that people form a lasting visual-appeal judgment about a website in as little as 50 milliseconds — long before they've read a single word.
APPLIED TO: Perception · Stage 01
Damasio's Somatic Marker Hypothesis found that emotion isn't separate from decision-making — it's the mechanism that makes fast decisions possible at all. People with damage to emotional processing become worse decision-makers, not more rational ones.
APPLIED TO: Decision · Stage 03
Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance showed people are uncomfortable holding two conflicting thoughts at once — and will act to resolve that discomfort faster than they'll act on a neutral statement they can simply file away.
APPLIED TO: Trust · Stage 02
Ariely's research on pricing psychology, including the decoy effect, showed people rarely evaluate a price in isolation — they evaluate it against whatever comparison point is placed near it, predictably and consistently.
THE ZERO INTERPRETATION STANDARD
Same materials. Same evaluator. Same score. Every time.
Every criterion produces a binary yes or no based on a directly observable condition. No inference, no assumption, no benefit of the doubt. That's what makes CORXIT's score trustworthy — the criterion decides, not the evaluator.