Publications

Educators

April 2013
Article

Gendered Races: Implications for Interracial Marriage, Leadership Selection, and Athletic Participation

By: Adam D. Galinsky, Erika V. Hall and Amy J.C. Cuddy

Six studies explored the overlap between racial and gender stereotypes and the consequences of this overlap for interracial dating, leadership selection, and athletic participation. Two initial studies, utilizing explicit and implicit measures, captured the stereotype... View Details

Keywords: Stereotypes; Attraction; Prejudice and Bias; Leadership; Race; Attitudes; Family and Family Relationships; Sports; Gender; United States

June 2023
Article

Amplification of Emotion on Social Media

By: Amit Goldenberg and Robb Willer

Why do expressions of emotion seem so heightened on social media? Brady et al. argue that extreme moral outrage on social media is not only driven by the producers and sharers of emotional expressions, but also by systematic biases in the way people that perceive moral... View Details

Keywords: Emotion; Perception; Prejudice and Bias; Emotions; Social Media

November–December 2021
Article

Does Gender Matter? The Effect of Management Responses on Reviewing Behavior

By: Davide Proserpio, Isamar Troncoso and Francesca Valsesia

We study the effect of management responses on the reviewing behavior of self-identified female and male reviewers. Using data from Tripadvisor, we show that after hotels begin to respond to reviews, the probability that a negative review comes from a self-identified... View Details

Keywords: Word Of Mouth; Online Reviews; Management Responses; E-commerce; Gender; Prejudice and Bias; Digital Platforms; Customers

June 2017
Article

When Novel Rituals Lead to Intergroup Bias: Evidence from Economic Games and Neurophysiology

By: Nicholas M. Hobson, Francesca Gino, Michael I. Norton and Michael Inzlicht

Long-established rituals in pre-existing cultural groups have been linked to the cultural evolution of large-scale group cooperation. Here we test the prediction that novel rituals—arbitrary hand and body gestures enacted in a stereotypical and repeated fashion—can... View Details

Keywords: Ritual; Intergroup Dynamics; Intergroup Bias; Neural Reward Processing; Open Data; Open Materials; Preregistered; Groups and Teams; Behavior; Prejudice and Bias; Cooperation

2016
Working Paper

Meet the Oligarchs: Business Legitimacy, State Capacity and Taxation

By: Rafael Di Tella, Juan Dubra and Alejandro Lagomarsino

We analyze the role of people’s beliefs about the rich in the determination of public policy in the context of a randomized online survey experiment. A question we study is the desirability of government-private sector meetings, a variable we argue is connected to... View Details

Keywords: Business Legitimacy; State Capacity; Meetings; Taxes; Top 1%; Regulation; Prejudice and Bias; Values and Beliefs; Taxation; Business and Government Relations

Article

Overcoming the Outcome Bias: Making Intentions Matter

By: Ovul Sezer, Ting Zhang, Francesca Gino and Max Bazerman

People often make the well-documented mistake of paying too much attention to the outcomes of others’ actions while neglecting information about the original intentions leading to those outcomes. In five experiments, we examine interventions aimed at reducing this... View Details

Keywords: Outcome Bias; Intentions; Joint Evaluation; Judgment; Separate Evaluation; Goals and Objectives; Prejudice and Bias; Judgments; Performance Evaluation; Outcome or Result

04 Sep 2019
Research & Ideas

'I Know Why You Voted for Trump' and Other Motivation Misperceptions

After Donald Trump won the US presidency in 2016, many Americans who hadn’t voted for him wondered: What exactly motivated so many other voters to choose him? It was a question right in the research wheelhouse of Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Kate Barasz,... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

2025
Working Paper

Discrimination, Rejection, and Job Search

By: Anne Boring, Katherine Coffman, Dylan Glover and María José González-Fuentes

We investigate how candidates’ willingness to apply responds to (potential) discrimination and rejection using a simulated labor market. Past work has shown that “blinding” job applications reduces discrimination and increases the rate at which women are hired. Our... View Details

Keywords: Job Search; Prejudice and Bias; Selection and Staffing; Demographics

January 2025
Module Note

Understanding and Addressing Gender Gaps

By: Katherine Coffman

This module provides a framework for students to analyze how gender stereotypes, through their impact on beliefs about others and beliefs about ourselves, contribute to gender gaps in the workplace. The module proceeds in three parts. First, through a case and an... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Gender; Leadership; Management Practices and Processes; Prejudice and Bias

April 3, 2024
Article

How Automakers Can Address Resistance to Self-Driving Cars

By: Stuti Agarwal, Julian De Freitas and Carey K. Morewedge

Research involving multiple experiments found that consumers have biased views of their driving abilities relative to those of other drivers and automated vehicles. These findings have implications for the adoption of partly or fully automated vehicles, which one day... View Details

Keywords: Technology Adoption; Consumer Behavior; Government Legislation; Prejudice and Bias; Auto Industry; Technology Industry

Register to Read

December 2024
Article

Human Bias in the Oversight of Firms: Evidence from Workplace Safety Violations

By: Jonas Heese, Gerardo Pérez Cavazos and Andreya Pérez Silva

We study the effects of mood as a source of human bias on regulators’ oversight and enforcement decisions. We use weather at facilities at the time of an OSHA inspection to proxy for the OSHA compliance officers’ mood. We find that during periods of good mood due to... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Happiness; Working Conditions; Safety

October 2013
Article

The Costs of Favoritism: Is Politically-Driven Aid Less Effective?

By: Axel Dreher, Stephan Klasen, James Vreeland and Eric Werker

As is now well documented, aid is given for both political as well as economic reasons. The conventional wisdom is that politically motivated aid is less effective in promoting developmental objectives. We examine the ex-post performance ratings of World Bank projects... View Details

Keywords: World Bank; Aid Effectiveness; Political Influence; United Nations Security Council; International Finance; Prejudice and Bias; Outcome or Result; Projects; Government and Politics; Power and Influence

06 Mar 2019
Sharpening Your Skills

Has the Glass Ceiling Been Broken (or at Least Cracked)?

On Friday, we will celebrate International Women's Day 2019, an annual event to promote the advancement of gender equality and gauge our progress across many domains. In business, researchers tell us, progress is happening but is still slow. There are more women on... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

20 Jul 2016
Research & Ideas

Airplane Design Brings Out the Class Warfare in Us All

This scenario may sound familiar, unfortunately: Your flight begins with poking and prodding by the TSA agent, all to wait for the inevitable delayed departure. Boarding extends the indignities: more waiting while your section is called, followed by a squeeze down the... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Air Transportation; Sports; Travel

2024
Working Paper

A Gender Backlash: Does Exposure to Female Labor Market Participation Fuel Gender Conservatism?

By: Paula Rettl, Diane Bolet, Catherine E. De Vries, Simone Cremaschi, Tarik Abou-Chadi and Sergi Pardos-Prado

The growing participation of women in the labor market has marked a significant societal transformation, coinciding with the rise of gender conservatism and far-right support. We study whether the economic consequences of labor market feminization and gender backlash... View Details

Keywords: Gender Bias; Gender Equality; Gender Inclusivity; Politics; Political Backlash; Political Culture; Conservatism; Gender; Government and Politics; Equality and Inequality; Prejudice and Bias; Labor

March 2021
Supplement

Applied: Using Behavioral Science to Debias Hiring (B)

By: Ashley Whillans and Jeff Polzer

At the end of 2018, Applied faced questions of stakeholder management and scale. Glazebrook wanted clients to get rid of CVs altogether. To do this, they would have to help hiring managers and recruiters easily build task-based assessments of the skills that their... View Details

Keywords: Hiring; Bias; Behavioral Science; Selection and Staffing; Prejudice and Bias; Information Technology; Competency and Skills

2023
Working Paper

Setting Gendered Expectations? Recruiter Outreach Bias in Online Tech Training Programs

By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Karim R. Lakhani and Roberto Fernandez

Competence development in digital technologies, analytics, and artificial intelligence is increasingly important to all types of organizations and their workforce. Universities and corporations are investing heavily in developing training programs, at all tenure... View Details

Keywords: STEM; Selection and Staffing; Gender; Prejudice and Bias; Training; Equality and Inequality; Competency and Skills

May–June 2021
Article

How to Close the Gender Gap

By: Colleen Ammerman and Boris Groysberg

Most companies say they’re committed to advancing women into leadership roles. What they may fail to recognize, though, is that systemic barriers are holding women back. As a result, women remain disadvantaged at every stage of their employment and underrepresented in... View Details

Keywords: Gender Discrimination; Employment; Gender; Prejudice and Bias; Talent and Talent Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation

2016
Working Paper

Who Pays for White-Collar Crime?

By: Paul Healy and George Serafeim

Using a proprietary dataset of 667 companies around the world that experienced white-collar crime, we investigate what drives punishment of perpetrators of crime. We find a significantly lower propensity to punish crime in our sample, where most crimes are not reported... View Details

Keywords: Crime; Gender Bias; Women; Women Executives; Corruption; Legal Aspects Of Business; Firing; Human Capital; Human Resource Management; Prejudice and Bias; Crime and Corruption; Judgments; Law Enforcement; Human Resources; Corporate Governance; Gender