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New research on judgments from Harvard Business School faculty on issues including the role of judgment in decision making, why we have difficulty selecting leaders, and the potentially harmful effects of built-in biases.
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Can These Business Students Motivate Londoners to Do the Right Thing?

by Dina Gerdeman

In the Harvard Business School course Behavioral Insights, students work in the UK with psychology experts to understand what motivates consumers and workers. What they learn can help businesses of all types, says Michael Luca. 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.

Why Ethical People Become Unethical Negotiators

by Dina Gerdeman

You may think you are an ethical person, but self-interest can cloud your judgment when you sit down at the bargaining table, says Max Bazerman. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Is There Still a Role for Judgment in Decision-Making?

by James Heskett

Summing Up: Human judgment should be a part of all decisions, but play a dominant role in significantly fewer of them, according to many of Jim Heskett's readers. Is good old-fashioned intuition out of date? What do YOU think? Closed for comment; 47 Comment(s) posted.

Sidetracked: Why Can’t We Stick to the Plan?

In her new book, Sidetracked, behavioral scientist and professor Francesca Gino explores the unexpected forces that often keep people from following through with their plans, both professional and personal. Closed for comment; 12 Comment(s) posted.

Why Can’t We Figure Out How to Select Leaders?

by Jim Heskett

Managers discuss their own experience in organizations in response to February's column. All good leaders teach as well as learn, says Jim Heskett. Is it possible with any degree of confidence to select people for certain leadership jobs? (Forum now closed. Next forum begins March 5.) Closed for comment; 88 Comment(s) posted.

How Can Decision Making Be Improved?

by Dolly Chugh, Katherine L. Milkman & Max H. Bazerman

While scholars can describe how people make decisions, and can envision how much better decision-making could be, they still have little understanding of how to help people overcome blind spots and behave optimally. Chugh, Milkman, and Bazerman organize the scattered knowledge that judgment and decision-making scholars have amassed over several decades about how to reduce biased decision-making. Their analysis of the existing literature on improvement strategies is designed to highlight the most promising avenues for future research. Key concepts include: People put great trust in their intuition. The past 50 years of decision-making research challenges that trust. A key task for psychologists is to identify how and in what decision-making situations people should try to move from intuitive, emotional thinking to more deliberative, logical thinking. The more that researchers understand the potentially harmful effects of some biased decision-making, the more important it is to have empirically tested strategies for reaching better decisions. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

Does Judgment Trump Experience?

by Jim Heskett

It's a question as relevant for business as for the U.S. presidential campaign, says HBS professor Jim Heskett. If "judgment capability" is a function of experience, what kind of experience is important? Does plenty of experience really improve judgment? Online forum now CLOSED. Closed for comment; 111 Comment(s) posted.