Why expensive, wasteful, effortful, or self-deprecating actions build trust and desire — Rory Sutherland on signalling. Use when the problem is credibility or desirability rather than meaning: the user asks 'why don't people trust us', 'how do we look more credible/committed/premium', 'is our guarantee/warranty worth it', 'should we spend on brand advertising', 'how do we justify a higher price', or wonders why a cheaper-looking competitor wins. Covers costly signals (advertising spend, guarantees, over-delivery), price-as-quality-signal (Veblen goods), and the Pratfall Effect (admitting a real flaw to gain trust). Inspired by Rory Sutherland's *Alchemy*. Routed to from psycho-logic. 日本語の相談（「信頼されない」「安心してもらえない」「強気な価格で売りたい」「広告費に意味はある？」）にも使う。中文咨询（“不被信任”“想以高价出售”“广告费有意义吗？”）也适用。
cultural-context
The perception-by-culture lens for psycho-logic — establish HOW a specific region, country, or subculture reads a signal before you send it, because perception is culturally coded and the same move can mean the opposite elsewhere. Use when adapting a product, price, message, or campaign to a new market; when the user asks 'will this work in [country/region]', 'why does this land in X but flop in Y', 'how do people here perceive Z', 'how do we localise/differentiate by region', or is about to copy a US/global playbook into another market. Covers the cultural dimensions that move Sutherland's levers — uncertainty avoidance, individualism/collectivism, status/power distance, high- vs low-context communication, mental-accounting norms, trust locus, and taboo/sacredness — and how each rewires reframing, costly-signaling, and experience-design. Inspired by Rory Sutherland's *Alchemy*. Routed to from psycho-logic; pair with market-recon for live local data. 日本語・中文の相談（「この地域で通用する？」「适合本地市场吗？」）にも使う。
含まれるファイル（2）
- SKILL.md7.6 KB
- evals/evals.json20.6 KB
SKILL.md（原文）
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Cultural Context — perception is coded by where you are
Psycho-logic works on perceived reality, and perception is written in a local language you don't automatically speak. A guarantee that reads as "confident" in one market reads as "desperate — why would they promise that?" in another. Cheapness signals "smart value" here and "they cut corners, how disrespectful" there. Before you reframe, signal, or redesign a moment, establish the local rules for what the move will mean. This is the lens; market-recon is the fieldwork.
The principle
Sutherland's levers all act on perception, and perception is set by culture — so the same lever, unchanged, produces different behaviour in different markets. The default failure is exporting a home-market playbook and assuming the psychology transfers. It doesn't. What transfers is the method (find the perception, not the metric); the content of "premium," "trust," "safe," and "expensive" is local and must be re-derived per market.
The dimensions that rewire the moves
Treat these as hypotheses about the target market — dials, not verdicts. For each move you're about to make, ask which dials bend it.
- Uncertainty avoidance — how much reassurance, detail, guarantee, and precedent people need before acting. High-avoidance markets reward explicit guarantees, credentials, and "everyone else does this too"; low-avoidance ones find the same reassurance patronising. (bends costly-signaling, experience-design)
- Individualism vs collectivism — does "what you gain" persuade, or "what your family/group/neighbours will think"? Social proof and belonging beat personal-benefit copy in collectivist markets. (bends reframing, costly-signaling)
- Status & power distance — whether visible hierarchy, prestige, and authority attract or repel. Status signals that lift desire in one market read as vulgar or untrustworthy in another. (bends reframing, costly-signaling)
- High- vs low-context communication — how explicit the message must be. Low-context markets (e.g. much of the US) want it spelled out; high-context ones (e.g. Japan) read tone, restraint, and what's left unsaid — over-explaining signals mistrust. (bends every message and reframe)
- Mental-accounting & price norms — what "expensive" means, whether round or .99 prices signal quality, whether haggling is expected, which pocket a cost lands in. Price framing is not portable. (bends reframing)
- Trust locus — where credibility comes from: institutions and certifications, personal relationships and introductions, or peer reviews and ratings. Aim your costly signal at the local source of trust. (bends costly-signaling)
- Taboo & sacredness — what must not be joked about, discounted, rushed, or made "fun." Cross this and no clever frame survives it. Critical in death, health, money, religion, and family. (vetoes moves that violate it)
How to apply
- Define the market precisely. Not "Japan" but "urban Kanto seniors" or "rural Kansai families." Country is the coarsest unit; region-within-country, urban/rural, generation, and subculture often matter more.
- List the moves you were about to make (the reframe, the signal, the felt-moment fix from the other skills).
- Run each move through the dials. For every move ask: in this market, does it still mean what I intend? Which dimension flips it? Rewrite the move to the local reading, or drop it.
- Get the live data, don't reason from stereotype. These dimensions generate hypotheses; a stereotype applied confidently is a trap. Send the specifics to market-recon to check against real local players, and to counterintuitive-tests to validate cheaply before rollout.
- Never let a taboo be "optimised." If a move crosses a local sacredness line, no efficiency gain is worth it — cut it first.
日本語の使用例
- 「US で当たった訴求をそのまま日本で出したい」→ 心理は輸出できない。高コンテクスト＋高不確実性回避の日本では、はっきり言い切る強い断定コピーや過剰な説明が「押しつけがましい/信用できない」と読まれる。手法は同じでも中身（"高級""安心"の意味）は市場ごとに作り直す。
- 「値下げで攻めれば地方でも勝てるはず」→ 価格の意味は非携帯。地域や世代によって "安い＝手抜き/失礼" と読まれる。安さを出す前に、その市場での価格の読まれ方を確認。
- 「レビュー星の数を前面に出す」→ 信頼の所在が市場で違う。紹介・地域の評判・寺や医師の推薦が効く層に、他人のレビューは刺さらないことがある。シグナルは"その土地の信頼の源"に向ける。
- 葬儀/シニア領域：タブー/神聖さが最優先の制約。割引・カジュアル化・スピード訴求は文脈次第で不謹慎に転ぶ。さらに関東/関西で葬送慣習（骨上げ・通夜の位置づけ等）が異なるため、「日本」ではなく地域単位で知覚ルールを立ててから reframing / costly-signaling / experience-design に渡す。
Cross-check against the canon
Sanity-check any cultural read against these; if it contradicts one, name the contradiction and justify it. When a claim is load-bearing or the user asks for evidence or fresh examples, web-search the named theory or case and cite what you find.
- Geert Hofstede, cultural dimensions — the source of the uncertainty-avoidance / individualism / power-distance dials; use his country scores as a first hypothesis, never a verdict.
- Edward T. Hall, high- vs low-context communication — the original framework behind "what's left unsaid" cultures.
- Erin Meyer, The Culture Map — the practitioner's update: the relative position between two cultures matters more than either one's absolute score.
- The ecological-fallacy caveat (McSweeney's critique of Hofstede) — dimension scores are country-level averages; applying them to an individual buyer or a subculture is a statistical error. That's exactly why market-recon exists.
Related skills
- psycho-logic — the router; this is its Step 0 (establish who and where before choosing a move)
- market-recon — turn these cultural hypotheses into live, sourced data on the actual target market
- reframing / costly-signaling / experience-design — the moves whose content this lens localises
- counterintuitive-tests — validate the localised move on behaviour before committing
レビュー
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同じリポジトリのスキル
概要と使いどころ
Generate ideas that don't sound logical, then validate them with cheap behavioural experiments — Rory Sutherland's 'the opposite of a good idea can be a good idea' plus revealed-preference testing. Use when the obvious/logical solution is saturated and the user wants genuinely different options, asks 'what's a creative/unconventional angle', 'how do we stand out', 'should we run a test/experiment', 'how do we know what people actually want', or is about to trust a survey/focus group. Covers deliberate inversion of the obvious move, why stated preferences lie, and designing small reversible experiments that watch behaviour. Inspired by Rory Sutherland's *Alchemy*. Routed to from psycho-logic. 日本語の相談（「競合と同じ案しか出ない」「アンケートは好評なのに売れない」「思い切った案を安く試したい」）にも使う。中文咨询（“只能想出和竞品一样的方案”“问卷好评却卖不动”）也适用。
Fix the psychologically significant moment, not the logically significant metric — Rory Sutherland on experience. Use when the outcome is fine but the journey feels bad: complaints about waiting, anxiety, uncertainty, or 'it's technically fast/cheap/correct but people still hate it'; when the user asks 'how do we reduce complaints', 'how do we make waiting/onboarding/checkout feel better', 'people are anxious during X', or is about to spend big to shave a number (wait time, load time, steps) when the real pain is how the moment feels. Covers uncertainty reduction, idle vs occupied waiting, and the peak-end rule. Inspired by Rory Sutherland's *Alchemy*. Routed to from psycho-logic. 日本語の相談（「待ち時間のクレームが多い」「手続きの途中で離脱される」「お客様を不安にさせている」）にも使う。中文咨询（“等待时间投诉多”“办理中途流失”“让客户感到不安”）也适用。
The live fieldwork layer for psycho-logic — go look at the actual target market NOW instead of reasoning from your training-data stereotype of it. Use when a psycho-logic move needs grounding in a specific place: the user asks 'what do competitors in [region/country] actually do', 'what's the real price band / norm here', 'how do local leaders position themselves', 'research this market before we localise', 'what signals trust to buyers in X', or is about to launch/adapt in a market you haven't studied. Runs structured web research in the local language — local competitors and their signals, price bands, category conventions, review/trust sources, local terminology, taboos and regulations — and synthesises a compact perception profile the four moves consume. Inspired by Rory Sutherland's *Alchemy*. Routed to from psycho-logic; pair with cultural-context (the lens that tells you what to look for). 日本語・中文の相談（「現地の実態を調べて」「调研当地市场」）にも使う。
Rory Sutherland's 'psycho-logic' approach to marketing, product, and business problems — solve the human perception, not just the engineering or economic metric. Use when the obvious 'logical' fix is expensive, slow, or already done by every competitor; when the user asks 'how do we make people want X', 'the product/price/funnel is fine but nobody converts', 'how do we stand out', 'is there a cheaper way to fix this', or mentions behavioral economics, nudges, irrational behavior, perception, or 'it doesn't make sense but it works'. This is the ROUTER skill: it diagnoses the problem in human terms, then dispatches to reframing, costly-signaling, counterintuitive-tests, or experience-design. Inspired by Rory Sutherland's book *Alchemy*. 日本語の相談（「商品はいいのに売れない」「値下げしかない？」「競合と差別化できない」）にも使う。中文咨询（“产品很好却卖不动”“只能降价吗？”“无法差异化”）也适用。For a catalogue of individual biases, use marketing-psychology (separate plugin) instead.
Change what something MEANS before you change what it IS — Rory Sutherland's cheapest lever. Use when a product, price, feature, or message is objectively fine but feels cheap, generic, boring, overpriced, or unjustified; when the user says 'how do we make this feel more premium/valuable/exciting', 'people don't get why it's worth it', 'how do we reposition/rename/repackage this', or wants to raise perceived value without changing the product or cutting the price. Covers renaming, recategorising, mental accounting (price framing), creating artificial value, and context-shifting. Inspired by Rory Sutherland's *Alchemy*. Routed to from psycho-logic. 日本語の相談（「高いと言われる」「安っぽく見える」「値下げせずに高級感を出したい」）にも使う。中文咨询（“被说太贵”“显得廉价”“不降价也想显得高级”）也适用。