Publications

2016
Article

Recursive Mentalizing and Common Knowledge in the Bystander Effect

By: Kyle A. Thomas, Julian De Freitas, Peter DiScioli and Steven Pinker

The more potential helpers there are, the less likely any individual is to help. A traditional explanation for this bystander effect is that responsibility diffuses across the multiple bystanders, diluting the responsibility of each. We investigate an... View Details

Keywords: Bystander Effect; Diffusion Of Responsibility; Volunteer's Dilemma; Common Knowledge; Theory Of Mind; Behavior; Theory

27 Jul 2015
News

The Power of Mindful Leadership

February 2013
Article

An Activity-Generating Theory of Regulation

By: Joshua Schwartzstein and Andrei Shleifer

We propose an activity-generating theory of regulation. When courts make errors, tort litigation becomes unpredictable and as such imposes risk on firms, thereby discouraging entry, innovation, and other socially desirable activity. When social returns to activity are... View Details

Keywords: Courts and Trials; Lawsuits and Litigation; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Theory

Article

Optimality Bias in Moral Judgment

By: Julian De Freitas and Samuel G.B. Johnson

We often make decisions with incomplete knowledge of their consequences. Might people nonetheless expect others to make optimal choices, despite this ignorance? Here, we show that people are sensitive to moral optimality: that people hold moral agents accountable... View Details

Keywords: Moral Judgment; Lay Decision Theory; Theory Of Mind; Causal Attribution; Moral Sensibility; Decision Making

28 Nov 2016
News

’Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal’

2020
Working Paper

A General Theory of Identification

By: Iavor Bojinov and Guillaume Basse

What does it mean to say that a quantity is identifiable from the data? Statisticians seem to agree on a definition in the context of parametric statistical models — roughly, a parameter θ in a model P = {Pθ : θ ∈ Θ} is identifiable if the mapping θ 7→ Pθ is injective.... View Details

Keywords: Identification; Econometric Models; Analytics and Data Science; Theory

01 Dec 2012
News

Tidy Minds

In a wide-ranging Q&A in the "Global Manager" column of the New York Times (September 2, 2012), Sir Martin Sorrell (MBA 1968), chief executive of the WPP Group, the world's largest advertising and marketing... View Details

Keywords: Advertising, Public Relations, and Related Services; Professional Services

Reconsidering the Urban Disadvantaged

Villa Victoria examines how of a group of low-income Puerto Rican migrants with little formal education living in a Boston enclave resisted the efforts of the city to relocate them in the name of "urban renewal." After a successful grassroots movement, the... View Details

Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice

The Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice seeks to bridge this disconnect. Based on the Harvard Business School Centennial Colloquium "Leadership: Advancing an Intellectual Discipline" and edited by HBS professors Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana, this volume... View Details

July 9, 2019
Article

Common Knowledge, Coordination, and Strategic Mentalizing in Human Social Life

By: Julian De Freitas, Kyle A. Thomas, Peter DiScioli and Steven Pinker

People often coordinate for mutual gain, such as keeping to opposite sides of a stairway, dubbing an object or place with a name, or assembling en masse to protest a regime. Because successful coordination requires complementary choices, these opportunities raise the... View Details

Keywords: Coordination; Common Knowledge; Theory Of Mind; Bystander Effect; Knowledge; Cooperation

21 Jun 2013
News

The Tipping Point for Mindfulness

22 Feb 2000
Research & Ideas

The Mind of the Market: Extending the Frontiers of Marketing Thought

might serve the study of consumer behavior. An HBS professor since 1991, Zaltman's work actually cuts across a number of boundaries. He's a co-director (with Stephen M. Kosslyn, Professor View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

16 May 2023
News

Entrepreneurship And A State Of Mind

1993
Comment

What Does a Theory of Creativity Require?

By: T. M. Amabile

Comments on Hans J. Eysenck's claims about the close alliance between creativity and psychosis in an article published in the periodical 'Psychological Inquiry.' Distinct senses of Eysenck's use of the term creativity; Failure of Eysenck to present an actual theory of... View Details

Keywords: Creativity; Social Psychology; Theory

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October 2018
Article

A Theory of Intergenerational Mobility

By: Gary Becker, Scott Duke Kominers, Kevin Murphy and Jorg L. Spenkuch

We develop a model of intergenerational resource transmission that emphasizes the link between cross-sectional inequality and intergenerational mobility. By drawing on first principles of human capital theory, we derive several novel results. In particular, we show... View Details

Keywords: Intergenerational Mobility; Inequality; Complementarities; Equality and Inequality; Human Capital; Income; Family and Family Relationships

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August 2017
Article

A Formal Theory of Strategy

By: Eric J. Van den Steen

What makes a decision strategic? When is strategy most important? This paper formally studies these questions, starting from a (functional) definition of strategy as “the smallest set of choices to optimally guide (or force) other choices.” The paper shows that this... View Details

Keywords: Strategy Development; Strategy; Decisions

2001
Working Paper

The Process of Building Theory

By: Clayton M. Christensen and David Sundahl

2010
Book

Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice

By: Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana

The study of leadership suffers intellectual neglect and has yet to be considered a serious academic discipline. And though the mission statements of most business schools profess to "develop leaders who make a difference in the world," these same schools produce... View Details

Keywords: Business Education; Interdisciplinary Studies; Leadership; Practice; Research; Theory