Prejudice in Big Law: Lawyers Behaving Badly When we at Ethics Unwrapped make public presentations about ethics, we speak to a broad range of audiences—e.g., church groups, social groups, student groups, and many professional groups including teachers, doctors, engineers, geologists, construction contractors, and lawyers. Legal professionals are aware that the pressures of their work create numerous ethical challenges and the profession’s continuing […] View
Justice Thomas, Conflicts of Interest, and the Supreme Court We’re thinking that the Supreme Court should schedule a movie night soon. The justices can pop some popcorn, snag some Jujubes, and then sit down to watch our videos on Conflicts of Interest. Supplemented by our Self-serving Bias video, we’d like to think that the jurists might learn a valuable lesson. Our optimism in this […] View
Triathlons and Doping: The Harm We Do When We Cheat “You’re not a bad person. You’re a good person who made a f**king terrible decision.” –Triathlete Jack Kelly to his friend Collin Chartier Triathletes are a special, often idealistic sort of athlete. In January 2022, Collin Chartier, expressed the sport’s ethic well: “The pursuit of excellence is what keeps me coming back. I may […] View
The Wirecard Fraud and Networks of the Oblivious Unfortunately, if you have an ethics blog you never run out of subjects to write about. Business scandals are especially plentiful. We’ve addressed, among others, the scandals at Boeing, Volkswagen, Ozy Media, McKinsey, WeWork, Robinhood, and Theranos. We haven’t yet addressed in any detail Sam Bankman-Fried and the FX scandal, Charlie Javice’s Frank fraud, Ruja […] View
Implicit Bias and “Knocking While Black” “Implicit bias” exists when we unconsciously hold attitudes towards others or associate stereotypes with them. (See our video: Implicit Bias) This is a controversial topic, but the evidence for the existence of implicit bias, both in the lab and in real life, keeps stacking up. There is substantial support for many forms of implicit bias, […] View
Ozy Media: Another “Fake It Until You Make It” Start-up Doesn’t Make It We’re getting just a little weary of writing “Start-ups Gone Bad” blog posts. The list is already substantial. We’ve profiled Theranos, of course. More than once, in fact. And then there’s WeWork, Robinhood, and the Fyre Festival. We’ve even written a more general blog post entitled “Lies and the Lying Entrepreneurs Who Tell Them”. This […] View
That’s Awesome! Why Awe-Inspiring Acts Inspire Moral Behavior Why do good people do bad things? Often, they are nudged on by the conformity bias. People have evolved to tend to take their cues as to how to dress, what to eat, and how to act from those around them, particularly in their in-group. Even people’s moral actions and judgments are heavily influenced by […] View
The Ethics of Complicity Hillary Clinton wrote that it “takes a village” to raise a child. It’s not a one-person job. Few things are, including financial and political frauds, sexual harassment, and war crimes. Both the legal system and ethical analysis tend to focus on the actual perpetrators of wrongdoing, but often they are not the only ones who […] View
Alexander Butterfield’s Lessons for Cassidy Hutchinson and for Us The conformity bias is the tendency we all have to take our cues from those around us as to how to dress, what music to listen to, and, as it happens, what moral decisions to make. If we are lucky enough to be with people who generally try to do the right thing, then we […] View
Moral Decision Making and Construal Level Theory (CLT) Although Ethics Unwrapped features videos, case studies, teaching notes and much more on many ethics-related topics, behavioral ethics—the science of moral decision making—gets most of our attention. Frequently, we focus on the question: “Why do good people often do bad things?” As with everything related to the brain, there is neither a simple answer nor […] View