Publications

2010
Chapter

Feeling Good about Giving: The Benefits (and Costs) of Self-interested Charitable Behavior

By: L. Anik, L. B. Aknin, M. I. Norton and E. W. Dunn

While lay intuitions and pop psychology suggest that helping others leads to higher levels of happiness, the existing evidence only weakly supports this causal claim: research in psychology, economics, and neuroscience exploring the benefits of charitable giving has... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Cost vs Benefits; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Outcome or Result; Relationships; Research; Behavior; Happiness; Motivation and Incentives

June 2014
Article

Charitable Giving When Altruism and Similarity Are Linked

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

This paper presents a model in which anonymous charitable donations are rationalized by two human tendencies drawn from the psychology literature. The first is people's disproportionate disposition to help those they agree with, while the second is the dependence of... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Attitudes; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

01 Sep 2023
News

Bless this Stress

and mental reframing strategies—tools that he practices and eventually relies on to get himself across the crane. With a bachelor’s in psychology and a master’s in social psychology (also from Harvard),... View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint; Business Schools & Computer & Management Training; Educational Services

May–June 2023
Article

Unmasking Behaviors During the Pandemic with Video Analytics

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Kaiquan Xu and Kannan Srinivasan

In 2020, as the novel coronavirus spread globally, face masks were recommended in public settings to protect against and slow down viral transmission. People complied to varying extents, and their reactions may have been driven by a variety of psychological factors.... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Social Influence; Social Norms; Health Pandemics; Behavior

August 2012
Article

From Mind Perception to Mental Connection: Synchrony as a Mechanism for Social Understanding

By: Thalia Wheatley, Olivia Kang, Carolyn Parkinson and Christine E. Looser

Connecting deeply with another mind is as enigmatic as it is fulfilling. Why people ‘‘click’’ with some people but not others is one of the great unsolved mysteries of science. However, researchers from psychology and neuroscience are converging on a likely... View Details

Keywords: Neuroscience; Social Psychology; Interpersonal Communication; Relationships

15 Aug 2023
Research & Ideas

Why Giving to Others Makes Us Happy

feel good for the actor.” Their review, published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, examines 15 published, pre-registered experiments on prosocial spending and reveals insights about when giving is likely to increase... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

January 2016
Case

Open Innovation at Fujitsu (A)

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Jean-François Harvey

This case study examines the open innovation journey at Fujitsu, a global information and communication technology company. The case ends with the location decision between Tokyo, Japan, downtown San Francisco or Sunnyvale, California, regarding establishing a small... View Details

Educators

2016
Working Paper

Paying (for) Attention: The Impact of Information Processing Costs on Bayesian Inference

By: Scott Duke Kominers, Xiaosheng Mu and Alexander Peysakhovich

Human information processing is often modeled as costless Bayesian inference. However, research in psychology shows that attention is a computationally costly and potentially limited resource. We study a Bayesian individual for whom computing posterior beliefs is... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Cognition and Thinking; Economics

2012
Book

Restoring Trust in Organizations and Leaders: Enduring Challenges and Emerging Answers

By: Roderick Kramer and Todd Lowell Pittinsky

Recent events around the world, especially in the financial sector and with respect to government performance, have severely undermined people’s trust in both private organizations and public institutions. In no small measure, these substantial and enduring declines in... View Details

Keywords: Trust; Leadership; Public Opinion; Social Psychology; Financial Services Industry; Public Administration Industry

2015
Working Paper

Crowdfunding as 'Donations': Theory & Evidence

By: Kevin J. Boudreau, Lars Bo Jeppesen, Toke Reichstein and Francesco Rullani

For a wide class of crowdfunding approaches, we argue that the reward structure (for funders) is closer to that of charitable donations to public goods than it is to traditional entrepreneurial finance. Many features of the design of crowdfunding platforms can... View Details

Keywords: Crowdfunding Platforms; Entrepreneurial Finance; Free-riding; Voluntary Contributions To Public Goods; Online Technology; Entrepreneurship; Social and Collaborative Networks; Finance; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

SSRN

2011
Working Paper

Charitable Giving When Altruism and Similarity Are Linked

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

This paper presents a model in which anonymous charitable donations are rationalized by two human tendencies drawn from the psychology literature. The first is people's disproportionate disposition to help those they agree with while the second is the dependence of... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Mathematical Methods; Attitudes; Interests; Perception; Wealth and Poverty

November–December 2020
Article

Lifting the Veil: The Benefits of Cost Transparency

By: Bhavya Mohan, Ryan W. Buell and Leslie K. John

Firms do not typically disclose information on their costs to produce a good to consumers. However, we provide evidence of when and why doing so can increase consumers’ purchase interest. Specifically, building on the psychology of disclosure and trust, we posit that... View Details

Keywords: Cost Transparency; Disclosure; Field Experiment; Cost; Trust; Consumer Behavior

SSRN

October 2020
Article

What Goes Down When Advice Goes Up: Younger Advisers Underestimate Their Impact

By: Ting Zhang and Michael S. North

Common wisdom suggests that older is wiser. Consequently, people rarely give advice to older individuals—even when they are relatively more expert—leading to missed learning opportunities. Across six studies (N=3,445), we explore the psychology of advisers when they... View Details

Keywords: Advice; Expertise; Knowledge Sharing; Experience and Expertise; Age; Perception