BigThink Update
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Although my plan was to cross-post my writing from Big Think here, I haven't been doing it the past several weeks, so here's an update on what I've been writing about recently, which I invite you to read in full over at BigThink. You can read all my posts at BigThink here.
Today, I wrote about a claim that one of my all-time favorite psychologists, Bob Cialdini, made in an interview with HBR. He argues that companies that behave unethically will drive away their ethical employees, who will feel uncomfortable. This will leave them with only unethical employees, who are likely to then turn their nefarious behavior on the company itself. I'm not so sure -- I suggest that unless the unethical behavior is truly blatant, most employees are likely to rationalize it instead of leaving. What do you think?
Last week I wrote about a shooting in Egypt in which 51 people died, mostly Morsi supporters. I discussed how both sides were likely to interpret the same events in very different ways, drawing on research by Lee Ross. I was saddened not to have been able to work in the sentence, "Construal is not just a river in Egypt," but in fairness, it's not.
Before that I wrote a post about research by my Booth colleague Ayelet Fishbach who finds that waiting can make people more patient. The gist is that we learn about ourselves from observing our own behavior (self-perception), and that when we wait we infer that we must really want whatever it is we're waiting for and are therefore willing to be more patient to get it. There's some really well designed studies in there -- if you're skeptical, have a look.
I also re-posted an old article about the role of luck in success. The original post was inspired in part by Michael Lewis' Princeton commencement address in 2012, and I re-posted it after Ben Bernanke gave a similarly-themed address at Princeton's 2013 commencement.
- The New York Times
May 1st, 2015