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New insights in behavior from Harvard Business School faculty on issues including how to foster and utilize group loyalty within organizations, giving and taking advice, motivation, and how managers can practice responsive listening.
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Ethics Bots and Other Ways to Move Your Code of Business Conduct Beyond Puffery

by Michael Blanding

Digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics allow companies to create more effective codes of business conduct, says Eugene Soltes. But technology isn't the only solution. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Stuck in Commuter Hell? You Can Still Be Productive

by Dina Gerdeman

Commuters who listen to music or browse social media might be increasing their chance of a stressful workday. Research by Francesca Gino and colleagues offers better ways to cope with a bad commute. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Ignore This Advice at Your Own Peril

by Dina Gerdeman

Refusing to act on advice from a respected colleague or mentor can backfire and damage your working relationship, a new study says. Hayley Blunden explains the career implications of seeking counsel from others. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Stereotypes and Belief Updating

by Katherine B. Coffman, Manuela Collis, and Leena Kulkarni

Increasing evidence demonstrates that stereotyped beliefs drive key economic decisions. This paper shows the significant role of self-stereotyping in predicting beliefs about one’s own ability. Stereotypes do not just affect beliefs about ability when information is scarce. In fact, stereotypes color the way information is incorporated into beliefs, perpetuating initial biases.

New Year, New Habits

by Sean Silverthorne

You are resolved to turn over a new leaf in 2019. Maybe become a better boss or crank up the productivity. What are the best ways to put these good intentions into practice? Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

The Salary Taboo: Privacy Norms and the Diffusion of Information

by Zoë B. Cullen and Ricardo Perez-Truglia

Barriers to the diffusion of salary information have implications for a wide range of labor market phenomena. This study of employees of a real organization shows that individuals significantly misinterpret their peers’ salaries, partly due to pervasive preferences for concealing own salary, and a potentially strategic decision of high earners to withhold their personal information.

Can Consumers Be Saved From Their Misguided Decisions?

by Rachel Layne

Even with a world of information at our fingertips, consumers routinely make bad decisions on everything from investments to health coverage. Can science help? Research by Joshua Schwartzstein and Benjamin Handel. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Sexual Harassment: What Employers Should Do Now

by Dina Gerdeman

Organizations are realizing they are not doing enough to stop the inappropriate behavior that can lead to an awkward office environment, lawsuits, and reputation damage. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Last Place Aversion in Queues

by Ryan W. Buell

While no one likes standing in line for service, being last intensifies the pain of waiting, doubles the probability of switching queues, and quadruples the chances of leaving the line altogether. Many service settings could be improved if managers actively mitigated last place aversion.

How to Get People Addicted to a Good Habit

by Carmen Nobel

Reshmaan Hussam and colleagues used experimental interventions to determine if people could be persuaded to develop a healthy habit. Potentially at stake: the lives of more than a million children. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Equity Concerns Are Narrowly Framed

by Christine L. Exley and Judd B. Kessler

This paper based on a large online study finds that individuals tend to differentiate in their concerns about fairness along specific dimensions, especially time and money, and are much more worried about fairness in one (time) than the other (money). These attitudes may help explain a seemingly wide variety of phenomena.

Shopping for Confirmation: How Disconfirming Feedback Shapes Social Networks

by Paul Green, Jr., Francesca Gino, and Bradley Staats

Managers who use feedback processes often assume that employees will respond to them with dutiful efforts to improve. This study finds that negative feedback instead causes employees to reshape their networks in order to shore up their professional and personal identity. This reshaping lowers performance—a result at odds with the goal of performance feedback.

Crime and Violence: Desensitization in Victims to Watching Criminal Events

by Rafael Di Tella, Lucia Freira, Ramiro H. Gálvez, Ernesto Schargrodsky, Diego Shalom, and Mariano Sigman

Findings from an experiment show that victims of crimes become desensitized to violence in biological and cognitive ways. These results may help explain a troubling contradiction in Latin America: rising crime along with decreasing public concern about it. As the rate of crime victimization increases, a larger group of the population shares this increased desensitization.

Habit Formation and Rational Addiction: A Field Experiment in Handwashing

by Reshmaan Hussam, Atonu Rabbani, Giovanni Reggiani, and Natalia Rigol

This study in rural West Bengal considers the role of habituation in an essential but unpopular preventive health behavior: handwashing with soap. The study finds that frontloading both financial and social incentives facilitates habituation, and agents internalize this habitual nature. Findings help guide the design of optimal incentives to increase the adoption of positive habits.

Governance Through Shame and Aspiration: Index Creation and Corporate Behavior in Japan

by Akash Chattopadhyay, Matthew D. Shaffer, and Charles C.Y. Wang

By exploiting the unique features of Japan’s JPX-Nikkei 400 index, this paper examines how membership in a stock index serves as a source of prestige that can motivate managers and influence corporate governance norms. Findings are important for understanding non-pecuniary mechanisms to induce meaningful changes in corporate behavior.

In Pursuit of Everyday Creativity

by Teresa M. Amabile

This paper describes the most compelling research trends around creativity and innovation. It suggests that 1) creative behavior of ordinary individuals is likely to become more important to the development of products and services, and 2) future studies should focus on such creative behavior—and related psychological states and environmental contexts—as it happens.

Expressive Voting and Its Cost: Evidence from Runoffs with Two or Three Candidates

by Vincent Pons and Clémence Tricaud

This paper highlights the motivations and consequences of citizens voting for lower-ranked candidates in elections held under plurality rule. Findings show that a large fraction of voters are what the authors call expressive. Expressive voters vote for their favorite candidate even if it causes the defeat of their second-best choice.

Behavioral Economists Can Make You a Healthier Consumer and Smarter Marketer

by Amelia Kunhardt

Video What’s behind the decisions we make, especially when it comes to eating well and losing weight? Can companies motivate employees to make healthier decisions? Leslie John discusses "interventions" to help people make better decisions when it comes to their health. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Unethical Amnesia: Why We Tend to Forget Our Own Bad Behavior

by Carmen Nobel

Francesca Gino and Maryam Kouchaki show that engaging in bad behavior causes memories of those acts to gradually become less clear—a phenomenon they call “unethical amnesia.” Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Is Group Loyalty a Force for Good or Evil?

by Michael Blanding

Many organizations try to foster employee loyalty, but at a risk. Angus Hildreth, Francesca Gino, and Max Bazerman discover when group loyalty fosters ethical behavior—and when it fosters corruption. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.