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Research Summary

Overview

Dr. Logg studies how people can improve the accuracy of their judgments and decisions. Her main program of work examines when people are most likely to leverage the power of algorithms to improve their accuracy. Research on what she calls “theory of machine” is... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Judgment; Algorithms; Advice Taking

2017
Working Paper

Identifying Sources of Inefficiency in Health Care

By: Amitabh Chandra and Douglas O. Staiger

In medicine, the reasons for variation in treatment rates across hospitals serving similar patients are not well understood. Some interpret this variation as unwarranted and push standardization of care as a way of reducing allocative inefficiency. However, an... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Performance Efficiency; Performance Productivity; Mathematical Methods

August 2016
Article

The Role of (Dis)similarity in (Mis)predicting Others' Preferences

By: Kate Barasz, Tami Kim and Leslie K. John

Consumers readily indicate liking options that appear dissimilar—for example, enjoying both rustic lake vacations and chic city vacations or liking both scholarly documentary films and action-packed thrillers. However, when predicting other consumers’ tastes for the... View Details

Keywords: Perceived Similarity; Prediction Error; Preference Prediction; Self-other Difference; Social Inference; Cognition and Thinking; Perception; Forecasting and Prediction

June 2012
Article

Racial Colorblindness: Emergence, Practice, and Implications

By: Evan P. Apfelbaum, Michael I. Norton and Samuel R. Sommers

We examine the pervasive endorsement of racial colorblindness-the belief that racial group membership should not be taken into account or even noticed-as a strategy for managing diversity and intergroup relations. Despite research demonstrating that race is perceived... View Details

Keywords: Management; Strategy; Law; Practice; Race; Research; Social Issues; Diversity

Article

The Social Utility of Feature Creep

By: Debora V. Thompson and Michael I. Norton

Previous research shows that consumers frequently choose products with too many features that they later find difficult to use. Our research shows that this seemingly suboptimal behavior may in fact confer benefits when factoring in the social context of consumption.... View Details

Keywords: Impression Management; Social Influence; Conspicuous Consumption; Signaling; Product Features; Consumer Behavior; Information Technology; Experience and Expertise; Status and Position

16 Dec 2008
First Look

First Look: December 16, 2008

variables. The results suggest that individuals bring to the workplace specific, measurable beliefs about speaking up, and that these implicit theories operate largely independently of current leader behaviors and other current work... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Article

Deep Down My Enemy Is Good: Thinking about the True Self Reduces Intergroup Bias

By: Julian De Freitas and Mina Cikara

Intergroup bias—preference for one's in-group relative to out-groups—is one of the most robust phenomena in all of psychology. Here we investigate whether a positive bias that operates at the individual-level, belief in a good true self, may be leveraged to reduce... View Details

Keywords: Intergroup Bias; True Self; Essentialism; Lay Theories

Article

The Not-So-Common-Wealth of Australia: Evidence for a Cross-Cultural Desire for a More Equal Distribution of Wealth.

By: Michael I. Norton, David T. Neal, Cassandra L. Govan, Dan Ariely and Elise Holland

Recent evidence suggests that Americans underestimate wealth inequality in the United States and favor a more equal wealth distribution (Norton & Ariely, 2011). Does this pattern reflect ideological dynamics unique to the United States, or is the phenomenon evident in... View Details

Keywords: Wealth; Equality and Inequality; Australia; United States

April 2024 (Revised August 2024)
Case

The Engine

By: Joshua Lev Krieger, Jim Matheson, Fiona Murray and Nicholas Christman

The Engine, a venture capital firm founded by MIT to fill a gap in the technology funding landscape by commercializing breakthrough science and technology. Led by managing partner and CEO Katie Rae, the Engine's unique approach involved an unusually longer fund life,... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Mission and Purpose; Venture Capital; Business Startups; Entrepreneurial Finance; Financial Services Industry

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2022
Chapter

Decarbonizing Academia's Flyout Culture

By: Nicholas Poggioli and Andrew J. Hoffman

Flight is technologically and culturally central to academic life. Academia's flyout culture is built on a set of shared beliefs and values about the importance of flying to being an academic. But flight also generates a large proportion of academia’s carbon emissions,... View Details

Keywords: Carbon Emissions; Air Transportation; Values and Beliefs; Environmental Sustainability; Higher Education; Education Industry

April 2023
Case

Twitter: The Freedom to Speak Freely and Be Heard

By: Randolph B. Cohen, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Mel Martin

In April 2022, serial entrepreneur Elon Musk announced that he would be interested in purchasing the social media site Twitter for $44 billion. With more than 100 million twitter followers, Musk had historically leveraged the site to engage with the customers of his... View Details

Keywords: Values and Beliefs; Acquisition; Social Media; Power and Influence; Technology Industry; Communications Industry; Public Relations Industry; United States

Educators

Jerry R. Green

David A. Wells Professor of Political Economy

John Leverett Professor in the University

Harvard University

Jerry Green is the John Leverett Professor in the University and the David A. Wells... View Details

Keywords: aerospace; education industry; insurance industry; professional services

19 Jul 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Charitable Giving When Altruism and Similarity are Linked

Keywords: by Julio J. Rotemberg

Winter 2024
Article

Is Pay Transparency Good?

By: Zoë B. Cullen

Countries around the world are enacting pay transparency policies to combat pay discrimination. Since 2000, 71 percent of OECD countries have done so. Most are enacting transparency horizontally, revealing pay between coworkers doing similar work within a firm. While... View Details

Keywords: Policy; Wages; Knowledge Sharing; Job Design and Levels; Negotiation; Performance Productivity; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives

July 2019
Article

I Know Why You Voted for Trump: (Over)inferring Motives Based on Choice

By: Kate Barasz, Tami Kim and Ioannis Evangelidis

People often speculate about why others make the choices they do. This paper investigates how such inferences are formed as a function of what is chosen. Specifically, when observers encounter someone else's choice (e.g., of political candidate), they use the chosen... View Details

Keywords: Self-other Difference; Social Perception; Inference-making; Preferences; Consumer Behavior; Prediction; Prediction Error; Decision Choices and Conditions; Perception; Behavior; Forecasting and Prediction

Forthcoming
Article

On the Limits of Anonymization for Promoting Diversity in Organizations

By: Linda W. Chang and Edward H. Chang

Anonymization of job applicant resumes is a recommended strategy to increase diversity in organizations, but large-scale tests have shown mixed results. We consider decision-makers’ social dominance orientation (SDO), a measure of anti-egalitarianism/endorsement of... View Details

Keywords: Diversity; Selection and Staffing; Rank and Position

12 Oct 2022
Video

Christine Marie Ortiz Guzman on how we are all “designers”

Article

Extension Request Avoidance Predicts Greater Time Stress Among Women

By: Ashley V. Whillans, Jaewon Yoon, Aurora Turek and Grant E. Donnelly

In nine studies using archival data, surveys, and experiments, we identify a factor that predicts gender differences in time stress and burnout. Across academic and professional settings, women are less likely to ask for more time when working under adjustable... View Details

Keywords: Burnout; Time Stress; Workplace Practices; Deadlines; Time Management; Gender; Well-being