Publications

27 Nov 2023
Research & Ideas

Voting Democrat or Republican? The Critical Childhood Influence That's Tough to Shake

political beliefs. The strategy was to measure the “extent to which a voter whose family moves to a new neighborhood during their childhood adopts a political behavior similar to their permanent-resident peers in that neighborhood,” the... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

26 Mar 2024
Research & Ideas

How Humans Outshine AI in Adapting to Change

concretely show what this buys humans over AI.” With many companies looking to AI to streamline processes and increase productivity, the research shines a light on the limitations of the technology, says De Freitas, who is also director of the View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Technology; Information Technology

12 Sep 2023
Book

Successful, But Still Feel Empty? A Happiness Scholar and Oprah Have Advice for You

goals, is the backbone of Brooks’ new book with Oprah Winfrey, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier. They weave together the best happiness how-tos from social psychology, behavioral economics, and neuroscience... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

2012
Working Paper

How Short-Termism Invites Corruption—And What to Do About It

By: Malcolm S. Salter

Researchers and business leaders have long decried short-termism: the excessive focus of executives of publicly traded companies-along with fund managers and other investors-on short-term results. The central concern is that short-termism discourages long-term... View Details

Keywords: Business and Shareholder Relations; Public Ownership; Performance Expectations; Economy; Crime and Corruption; Ethics; Trust; Financial Services Industry; United States

2010
Working Paper

Agency Revisited

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Daniel F. Spulber

The article presents a comprehensive overview of the principal-agent model that emphasizes the role of trust in the agency relationship. The analysis demonstrates that the legal remedy for breach of duty can result in a full-information efficient outcome eliminating... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Contracts; Agency Theory; Mathematical Methods; Behavior; Trust

2021
Working Paper

Equity Concerns Are Narrowly Framed

By: Christine L Exley and Judd B. Kessler

Distributional decisions regularly involve multiple payoff components. In a series of experiments, we show that subjects frequently exhibit narrow equity concerns: individuals apply their fairness preferences narrowly, on a specific component of payoffs, rather... View Details

Keywords: Equity; Equality and Inequality; Fairness; Perception; Outcome or Result; Resource Allocation; Behavior

SSRN

10 Feb 2011
Working Paper Summaries

The Dark Side of Creativity: Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest

Keywords: by Francesca Gino & Dan Ariely

Web

Community Values | About

today includes a wide range of courses that deal with the issues of ethics and leadership. For example, Leadership and Corporate Accountability is an interdisciplinary course that draws on economics, law, psychology, and organizational... View Details

01 Mar 2011
First Look

First Look: March 1

Authors:Leigh Plunkett Tost, Francesca Gino, and Richard P. Larrick Abstract We examine the impact of subjective power on leadership behavior and demonstrate that the psychological effect of power on leaders spills over to impact team... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

03 Oct 2023
Research Event

Build the Life You Want: Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey Share Happiness Tips

would right now say that America seems like a particularly happy place. And I was wondering, both of you should address this, it's like what is the source of a kind of national unhappiness? I mean, we we see this in politics, obviously. A-- A level of View Details

Keywords: by HBS Staff

15 Feb 2011
First Look

First Look: Feb. 15

who recalled childhood memories judged the ethically questionable behavior of others more harshly, suggesting that childhood memories lead to altruistic punishment. Finally, in Experiment 4, compared to a... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

June 2013
Article

What Is Privacy Worth?

By: Alessandro Acquisti, Leslie K. John and George Loewenstein

Understanding the value that individuals assign to the protection of their personal data is of great importance for business, law, and public policy. We use a field experiment informed by behavioral economics and decision research to investigate individual privacy... View Details

Keywords: Safety; Rights; Valuation; Ethics; Identity

2019
Working Paper

Birds of a Feather ... Enforce Social Norms? Interactions Among Culture, Norms, and Strategy

By: Hongyi Li and Eric J. Van den Steen

This paper analyzes how shared beliefs and preferences (or values) cause the emergence of social norms; why people may enforce norms that go against their own beliefs and preferences/values; and how this may cause a disconnect to develop between the... View Details

Keywords: Culture; Norms; Values and Beliefs; Organizational Culture; Strategy

SSRN

05 Dec 2016
Research & Ideas

How To Deceive Others With Truthful Statements (It's Called 'Paltering,' And It's Risky)

paltered in some or most of their negotiations, whereas a smaller number, 21 percent, said that they lied by commission. Perhaps they palter more often because it doesn’t make them feel as badly as outright lying. The researchers found that negotiators consider... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

11 Feb 2014
First Look

First Look: February 11

http://people.hbs.edu/mluca/Papers%20on%20RIS/Land%20Reform.pdf August 2013 Psychological Science Evil Genius? How Dishonesty Can Lead to Greater Creativity By: Gino, F., and S. Wiltermuth Abstract—We propose that dishonest and creative View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

June 2012
Article

Pricing to Create Shared Value

By: Marco Bertini and John T. Gourville

Many companies are in competition with their customers to extract as much value as possible from every transaction. Pricing is their weapon of choice, and consumers fight back by rooting out and disseminating pricing policies that seem unfair. The problem is that... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Marketing Strategy; Price; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Relationship Management; Value Creation; Fairness

April 2014
Article

Evil Genius? How Dishonesty Can Lead to Greater Creativity

By: F. Gino and S. Wiltermuth

We propose that dishonest and creative behavior have something in common: they both involve breaking rules. Because of this shared feature, creativity may lead to dishonesty (as shown in prior work), and dishonesty may lead to creativity (the hypothesis we tested in... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; Creativity; Attitudes