HiPPO Effect
Updated 2026-07-31
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
HiPPO, short for Highest Paid Person's Opinion, is a term popularized in web analytics writing, notably by Avinash Kaushik, to describe decisions that turn on the seniority of the speaker rather than on evidence. It names a failure mode, not a person: when the most senior participant states a preference early, that preference becomes the group's default answer and analysis is reduced to justification. The bias is strongest where metrics are ambiguous and where challenging a superior carries career risk.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Spot the pattern: notice when a discussion shifts from evidence to what the senior person prefers. - Reorder the room: collect written estimates before anyone senior speaks. - Pre-commit criteria: define what evidence would change the decision before debate starts.
Anchor fast decisions
Hierarchy distorts what the group knows. Because contradicting a senior person is costly, dissent gets suppressed rather than refuted, and the information held by people closest to the work never enters the decision. The senior person also sits furthest from the raw evidence, having received filtered summaries, so their intuition is simultaneously least informed and most decisive, an inversion of accuracy and influence.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- bit.lyhttps://bit.ly/HIPPOExplainedverified
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