Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(1,144)
- Faculty Publications (335)
Bias
→
- November 2012
- Article
An Age Penalty in Racial Preferences
By: Deborah A. Small, Devin G. Pope and Michael I. Norton
We document an age penalty in racial discrimination: charitable behavior toward African American children decreases-and negative stereotypical inferences increase-with the age of those children. Using data from an online charity that solicits donations for school... View Details
- 2012
- Working Paper
When Supply-Chain Disruptions Matter
By: William Schmidt and Ananth Raman
Supply-chain disruptions have a material effect on company value, but this impact can vary considerably. Thus, it is important for managers and investors to recognize the types of disruptions and the organizational factors that lead to the worst outcomes. Prior... View Details
- 2012
- Article
Hiring Cheerleaders: Board Appointments of 'Independent' Directors
By: Lauren Cohen, Andrea Frazzini and Christopher Malloy
We provide evidence that firms appoint independent directors who are overly sympathetic to management, while still technically independent according to regulatory definitions. We explore a subset of independent directors for whom we have detailed, micro-level data on... View Details
- 2012
- Working Paper
When Performance Trumps Gender Bias: Joint versus Separate Evaluation
By: Iris Bohnet, Alexandra van Geen and Max H. Bazerman
We examine a new intervention to overcome gender biases in hiring, promotion, and job assignments: an "evaluation nudge," in which people are evaluated jointly rather than separately regarding their future performance. Evaluators are more likely to focus on individual... View Details
- Forthcoming
- Chapter
Cognitive Barriers to Environmental Action: Problems and Solutions
By: Lisa L. Shu and Max Bazerman
- Article
Deception and Its Detection: Effects of Monetary Incentives and Personal Relationship History
By: Lyn M. Van Swol, Deepak Malhotra and Michael T. Braun
The study examined detection of deception in unsanctioned, consequential lies between either friends or strangers using an ultimatum game. The sender was given an amount of money to divide with the receiver. The receiver did not know the precise amount the sender had... View Details
- 2013
- Working Paper
The Dynamics of Firm Lobbying
By: William R. Kerr, William F. Lincoln and Prachi Mishra
We study the determinants of the dynamics of firm lobbying behavior using a panel data set covering 1998–2006. Our data exhibit three striking facts: (i) few firms lobby, (ii) lobbying status is strongly associated with firm size, and (iii) lobbying status is highly... View Details
- September 2011
- Article
Taking Gender into Account: Theory and Design for Women's Leadership Development Programs
By: Robin J. Ely, Herminia Ibarra and Deborah Kolb
We conceptualize leadership development as identity work and show how subtle forms of gender bias in the culture and in organizations interfere with the identity work of women leaders. Based on this insight, we revisit traditional approaches to standard leadership... View Details
- June 2011
- Article
Truth in Giving: Experimental Evidence on the Welfare Effects of Informed Giving to the Poor
By: Christina Fong and Felix Oberholzer-Gee
It is often difficult for donors to predict the value of charitable giving because they know little about the persons who receive their help. This concern is particularly acute when making contributions to organizations that serve heterogeneous populations. While we... View Details
- May 2011
- Article
Overconfidence by Bayesian Rational Agents
This paper derives two mechanisms through which Bayesian-rational individuals with differing priors will tend to be relatively overconfident about their estimates and predictions, in the sense of overestimating the precision of these estimates. The intuition behind one... View Details
- April 2011
- Article
Why Leaders Don't Learn from Success
By: Francesca Gino and Gary P. Pisano
We argue that for a variety of psychological reasons, it is often much harder for leaders and organizations to learn from success than to learn from failure. Success creates three kinds of traps that often impede deep learning. The first is attribution error or the... View Details
- March 2011
- Supplement
BioPasteur: Instructions for the group discussion
By: Giovanni Gavetti and Francesca Gino
The purpose of this exercise is to let students experience a few biases that can be deleterious to strategic decision-making. In particular, students are induced to fall into a confirmatory trap, and to experience other biases such as anchoring and sampling bias.... View Details
- March 2011 (Revised April 2011)
- Exercise
The Future of BioPasteur
By: Giovanni Gavetti and Francesca Gino
The purpose of this exercise is to let students experience a few biases that can be deleterious to strategic decision-making. In particular, students are induced to fall into a confirmatory trap, and to experience other biases such as anchoring and sampling bias.... View Details
- March 2011
- Supplement
The Future of BioPasteur -- Supplement
By: Giovanni Gavetti and Francesca Gino
The purpose of this exercise is to let students experience a few biases that can be deleterious to strategic decision-making. In particular, students are induced to fall into a confirmatory trap, and to experience other biases such as anchoring and sampling bias.... View Details
- Article
Temporal View of the Costs and Benefits of Self-Deception
By: Zoe Chance, Michael I. Norton, Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely
Researchers have documented many cases in which individuals rationalize their regrettable actions. Four experiments examine situations in which people go beyond merely explaining away their misconduct to actively deceiving themselves. We find that those who exploit... View Details
- Article
Whites See Racism as a Zero-Sum Game That They Are Now Losing
By: Michael I. Norton and Samuel R. Sommers
Although some have heralded recent political and cultural developments as signaling the arrival of a post-racial era in America, several legal and social controversies regarding "reverse racism" highlight Whites' increasing concern about anti-White bias. We show that... View Details
Keywords: Racism; Zero-sum Game; Bias; Affirmative Action; Prejudice and Bias; Race; Social Issues; United States
- 2010
- Working Paper
Cognitive Barriers to Environmental Action: Problems and Solutions
By: Lisa L. Shu and Max Bazerman
We explore interventions at the individual level and focus on recognized cognitive barriers from behavioral decision-making literature. In particular, we highlight three cognitive barriers that impede sound individual decision making that have particular relevance to... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Valuation When Cash Flow Forecasts Are Biased
This paper focuses adaptations to the discount cash flow (DCF) method when valuing forecasted cash flows that are biased measures of expected cash flows. I imagine a simple setting where the expected cash flows equal the forecasted cash flows plus an omitted downside.... View Details
- June 2010 (Revised February 2013)
- Background Note
The Precautionary Principle
By: Michael W. Toffel and Nazli Z. Uludere Aragon
This note describes the precautionary principle and its key tenets, highlights challenges associated with its use, and includes many examples of its application, primarily within the realm of regulating activities based on the risk of harm to human health and the... View Details
- June 2010
- Article
Correspondence Bias in Performance Evaluation: Why Grade Inflation Works
By: D. A. Moore, S. A. Swift, Z. S. Sharek and F. Gino