Publications

05 Dec 2023
Research & Ideas

Lessons in Decision-Making: Confident People Aren't Always Correct (Except When They Are)

University of California, Santa Barbara. How does one measure confidence? In the first phase of the study, the team invited more than 2,000 people to perform 15 classic cognitive bias tasks, including: The “knapsack problem”—a strategic... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

2009
Working Paper

A Decision-making Perspective to Negotiation: A Review of the Past and a Look into the Future

By: Chia-Jung Tsay and Max H. Bazerman

Through the decision-analytic approach to negotiations, the past quarter century has seen the development of a better dialog between the descriptive and the prescriptive, as well as a burgeoning interest in the field for both academics and practitioners. Researchers... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Ethics; Negotiation; Behavior; Cognition and Thinking; Emotions

13 Jan 2003
Research & Ideas

The Subconscious Mind of the Consumer (And How To Reach It)

indeed revolutionizing our ability to understand customers. Insights about the workings of the cognitive unconscious including memory, attention, information processing, the nature of human universals, and View Details

Keywords: by Manda Mahoney

Article

Technology, Identity, and Inertia: Through the Lens of 'The Digital Photography Company'

By: Mary Tripsas

Organizations often experience difficulty when pursuing new technology. Large bodies of research have examined the behavioral, social, and cognitive forces that underlie this phenomenon; however, the role of an organization's identity remains relatively unexplored.... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Disruptive Innovation; Organizational Culture; Behavior; Cognition and Thinking; Identity; Perception; Technology Adoption

2015
Working Paper

'Be Careless with That!' Availability of Product Upgrades Increases Cavalier Behavior Toward Possessions

By: Silvia Bellezza, Joshua M. Ackerman and Francesca Gino

Consumers are often faced with the opportunity to purchase a new, enhanced product (e.g., a new phone), even though the device they currently own is still fully functional. We propose that consumers act more recklessly with their current products and are less concerned... View Details

Keywords: Carelessness; Product Upgrade; Justification; Loss; Consumer Behavior; Attitudes; Product; Ownership

SSRN

25 Feb 2019
Research & Ideas

How Gender Stereotypes Kill a Woman’s Self-Confidence

cognitive ability in five areas: general science, arithmetic reasoning, math knowledge, mechanical comprehension, and assembling objects. They were asked to guess their total number of correct answers, as well as how their performance... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

Article

Guilt Enhances the Sense of Control and Drives Risky Judgments

By: Maryam Kouchaki, Christopher Oveis and F. Gino

The present studies investigate the hypothesis that guilt influences risk-taking by enhancing one's sense of control. Across multiple inductions of guilt, we demonstrate that experimentally induced guilt enhances optimism about risks for the self (Study 1), preferences... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Behavior; Emotions

Purchase

March 2021
Article

Bayesian Signatures of Confidence and Central Tendency in Perceptual Judgment

By: Yang Xiang, Thomas Graeber, Benjamin Enke and Samuel Gershman

This paper theoretically and empirically investigates the role of Bayesian noisy cognition in perceptual judgment, focusing on the central tendency effect: the well-known empirical regularity that perceptual judgments are biased towards the center of the... View Details

Keywords: Visual Perception; Bayesian Modeling; Perception; Judgments

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2008
Working Paper

Behavioral Aspects of Price Setting, and Their Policy Implications

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

This paper starts by discussing consumers' cognitive and emotional reaction to posted prices. Cognitively, some consumers do not appear to make effective use of price information to maximize their consumption-based utility. Emotionally, prices can induce regret and... View Details

Keywords: Inflation and Deflation; Price; Policy; Laws and Statutes; Consumer Behavior; Emotions

05 Feb 2024
Research & Ideas

The Middle Manager of the Future: More Coaching, Less Commanding

important,” he says. “But I think it’s increasingly going to be the social skills, the cognitive skills, the ability to learn things and the ability to adapt that are going to be more important.” For... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

2025
Article

Emotion Regulation Contagion Drives Reduction in Negative Intergroup Emotions

By: Michael Pinus, Yajun Cao, Eran Halperin, Alin Coman, James J. Gross and Amit Goldenberg

When emotions occur in groups, they sometimes impact group behavior in undesired ways. Reducing group’s emotions with emotion regulation interventions can be helpful, but may also be a challenge, because treating every person in the group is often infeasible. One... View Details

Keywords: Emotion Contagion; Emotion; Emotion Regulation; Groups and Teams; Emotions; Conflict and Resolution

21 Jan 2009
First Look

First Look: January 21, 2009

sentiment. One explanation for this discrepancy is that consumers are motivated to use moral disengagement strategies to reduce cognitive dissonance when their desire for a product conflicts with their moral standards. In two studies we... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

April 2013
Article

Rx: Human Nature: How Behavioral Economics Is Promoting Better Health Around the World

By: Nava Ashraf

Why doesn't a woman who continues to have unwanted pregnancies avail herself of the free contraception at a nearby clinic? What keeps people from using free chlorine tablets to purify their drinking water? Behavioral economics has shown us that we don't always act in... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Economics; Motivation and Incentives; Zambia

March 2012
Article

The Influence of Prior Industry Affiliation on Framing in Nascent Industries: The Evolution of Digital Cameras

By: Mary J. Benner and Mary Tripsas

New industries sparked by technological change are characterized by high technological, market, and competitive uncertainty. In this paper we explore how a firm's conceptualization of products in this context, reflected in its introduction of product features, is... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Transformation; Risk and Uncertainty; Competitive Strategy; Product; Values and Beliefs; Mathematical Methods; Power and Influence; Behavior; Experience and Expertise; Design; Market Entry and Exit; Employment Industry; Computer Industry

18 Dec 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, December 18, 2018

learning capabilities intertwine with managerial cognitive capabilities to support the processes of sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring. We draw from the literature on team learning to develop four categories based on the orientation... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

04 Jan 2010
Research & Ideas

Best of HBS Working Knowledge 2009

What were the management trends in 2009? Fascination with social networking and rethinking common wisdom about goal setting. Here are the Top 10 articles and Top 5 working papers that appeared in HBS Working Knowledge in 2009. Enjoy! TOP... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

20 Jun 2023
Research & Ideas

Looking to Leave a Mark? Memorable Leaders Don't Just Spout Statistics, They Tell Stories

social programs was a much bigger problem than it was. “Even when unrepresentative of reality at large,” stories “are more easily recalled than statistics,” the study notes. “This selective recall can give rise to misperceptions about... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis

11 Jan 2011
First Look

First Look: Jan. 11

http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470634251.html Thinking Too Little to Thinking Too Much: A Continuum of Decision Making Authors:Dan Ariely and Michael I. Norton Publication:Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Article

The What and Why of Self-deception

By: Zoë Chance and Michael I. Norton

Scholars from many disciplines have investigated self-deception, but defining self-deception and establishing its possible benefits have been a matter of heated debate—a debate impoverished by a relative lack of empirical research. Drawing on recent research, we first... View Details

Keywords: Cognition and Thinking