Publications

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Article

Forgoing Earned Incentives to Signal Pure Motives

By: Erika L. Kirgios, Edward H. Chang, Emma E. Levine, Katherine L. Milkman and Judd B. Kessler

Policy makers, employers, and insurers often provide financial incentives to encourage citizens, employees, and customers to take actions that are good for them or for society (e.g., energy conservation, healthy living, safe driving). Although financial incentives are... View Details

Keywords: Incentives; Motivation Laundering; Self-signaling; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Perception

01 Mar 2014
News

Research Brief: Better to Be Safe with a Sorry

"Never apologize, mister," John Wayne's character famously said in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. "It's a sign of weakness." And while previous academic research has similarly concluded that apologizing during negotiations hurts perceptions of... View Details

Keywords: Morrell, Daniel; Information

Jul 2012
Article

A Better Way to Tax U.S. Businesses

also raise revenue--and end public perceptions of unfairness. These reforms could actually turn the U.S. tax system into an asset. But they won't be effective if managers don't change their mind-set. Rather than shirking their tax... View Details

20 Oct 2022 - 22 Oct 2022
Talk

Stigma Against AI Companion Applications

By: Julian De Freitas, A. Ragnhildstveit and A.K. Uğuralp

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Attitudes; Perception

December 10, 2021
Editorial

Go Ahead and Ask for More Time on That Deadline

By: A.V. Whillans and A.V. Whillans

Unrealistic deadlines don’t help anyone—and yet more often than not, employees avoid asking for extensions even when they know more time would help them do a better job. Through a series of studies with more than 4,000 working adults, the author illustrates how despite... View Details

Keywords: Deadlines; Extension Request; Employees; Time Management; Behavior; Perception

2018
Working Paper

Is Overconfidence a Motivated Bias? Experimental Evidence

By: Jennifer M. Logg, Uriel Haran and Don A. Moore

Are overconfident beliefs driven by the motivation to view oneself positively? We test the relationship between motivation and overconfidence using two distinct, but often conflated, measures: better-than-average (BTA) beliefs and overplacement. Our results suggest... View Details

Keywords: Self-perception; Overconfidence; Motivation; Better-Than-Average Effect; Specifically; Personal Characteristics; Perception; Motivation and Incentives; Cognition and Thinking

SSRN

July 2022
Article

The Developmental Origins and Behavioral Consequences of Attributions for Inequality

By: Antonya Marie Gonzalez, Lucia Macchia and Ashley V. Whillans

Attributions, or lay explanations for inequality, have been linked to inequality-relevant behavior. In adults and children, attributing inequality to an individual rather than contextual or structural causes is linked to greater support for economic inequality and less... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Behavior; Perception

May 2019
Article

A Counterfeit Competence: After Threat, Cheating Boosts One's Self-Image

By: S. Wiley Wakeman, Celia Moore and F. Gino

In six studies, we show that after experiencing a threat to their abilities, individuals who misrepresent their performance as better than it actually is boost their feelings of competence. We situate these findings in the literature on self-protection. We show that... View Details

Keywords: Cheating; Self-perception; Self-protection; Competency and Skills; Identity; Perception; Performance

October–December 2015
Article

Reducing Bounded Ethicality: How to Help Individuals Notice and Avoid Unethical Behavior

By: Ting Zhang, Pinar O. Fletcher, Francesca Gino and Max H. Bazerman

Research on ethics has focused on the factors that help individuals act ethically when they are tempted to cheat. However, we know little about how best to help individuals notice unethical behaviors in others and in themselves. This paper identifies a solution:... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Management Skills; Behavior; Perception

6 Jun 2002 - 9 Jun 2002
Conference Presentation

Perceived Individual Creativity in Organizational Teamwork as a Function of Personality and Gender

By: Giovanni Moneta, Teresa M. Amabile, Elizabeth Schatzel and Steven J. Kramer

Keywords: Gender; Organizations; Groups and Teams; Creativity; Identity; Perception

February 2020
Article

Being 'Good' or 'Good Enough': Prosocial Risk and the Structure of Moral Self-regard

By: Julian Zlatev, Daniella M. Kupor, Kristin Laurin and Dale T. Miller

The motivation to feel moral powerfully guides people’s prosocial behavior. We propose that people’s efforts to preserve their moral self-regard conform to a moral threshold model. This model predicts that people are primarily concerned with whether their... View Details

Keywords: Prosocial Behavior; Moral Sensibility; Decision Making; Risk and Uncertainty; Behavior; Perception

Purchase

September 2021
Article

Gender Stereotypes in Deliberation and Team Decisions

By: Katherine B. Coffman, Clio Bryant Flikkema and Olga Shurchkov

We explore how groups deliberate and decide on ideas in an experiment with communication. We find that gender biases play a significant role in which group members are chosen to answer on behalf of the group. Conditional on the quality of their ideas, individuals are... View Details

Keywords: Gender Differences; Stereotypes; Teams; Economic Experiments; Gender; Prejudice and Bias; Groups and Teams; Perception

10 Mar 2008
Research & Ideas

Encouraging Entrepreneurs: Lessons for Government Policy

growing academic interest in the influence of social networks on entrepreneurial successes and failures, Nanda says. As an example, he cites Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128, a 1994 book by... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

24 Jul 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, July 24, 2018

find evidence of lessened gender penalties for female-led ventures that are presented using a social impact frame. In a second study, we experimentally validate this effect and show that it is mediated by the effect of View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

19 Dec 2006
First Look

First Look: December 19, 2006

and demand with the help of the invisible hand in a short-term, quasi-static perspective, government coordinates the modernization of market frameworks in accord with changing circumstances, including changing perceptions of societal... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 2012
Article

Paying to Be Nice: Consistency and Costly Prosocial Behavior

By: Ayelet Gneezy, Alex Imas, Amber Brown, Leif D. Nelson and Michael I. Norton

Building on previous research in economics and psychology, we propose that the costliness of initial prosocial behavior positively influences whether that behavior leads to consistent future behaviors. We suggest that costly prosocial behaviors serve as a signal of... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Perception; Performance Consistency; Identity

August 20, 2024
Article

Sexual Assault Victims Face a Penalty for Adjacent Consent

By: Jillian J. Jordan and Roseanna Sommers

Across 11 experimental studies (n = 12,257), we show that female victims of sexual assault are blamed more and seen as less morally virtuous if their assault follows voluntary sexual intimacy, a factor we term “adjacent consent”. Moreover, we illuminate a... View Details

Keywords: Perception; Prejudice and Bias; Moral Sensibility; Crime and Corruption; Social Issues