Abuse for All to See The firestorm over domestic abuse ignited by the staggered public release of two videos of Ray Rice and his then-girlfriend and now wife Janay Palmer illustrates one important finding of the behavioral ethics research that underlies many of our Ethics Unwrapped educational videos: many moral judgments are emotion-driven. It seems to most people that their […] View
Why Good Teachers Do Bad Things Rachel Aviv’s article “Wrong Answer” in a recent New Yorker issue presents a textbook case of why good people do bad things. The article tells the story of the recent cheating scandal in the Atlanta School District, which was one of the worst of a string of school cheating scandals across the U.S. Forty-four of […] View
Say What?! Arational Persuasion There is considerable evidence that how a question is framed can greatly affect how people answer it. Framing effects can cause well-intentioned people to make unethical decisions, as you can see by watching our Concepts Unwrapped video Framing, or our Cases Unwrapped video Jack & Framing. A commonly cited example of how framing can affect […] View
Incentivizing the VA Our Concepts Unwrapped video on Incentive Gaming, with content and narration provided by Professor Lamar Pierce of Washington University-St. Louis’s Olin School of Business, explains how many people will game incentive systems if given the opportunity. School teachers will teach to the test if they are rewarded based on how many of their students pass […] View
A Brief Guide to Behavioral Legal Ethics Guest blogger Tigran Eldred is an Associate Professor of Law at the New England School of Law in Boston. He has a distinguished background as a public defender and civil rights lawyer before he joined academia. However, our particular interest in his contribution relates to his interest in behavioral ethics as it applies to the […] View
Helping Your Employees Be Their Best Selves There is no single correct way to teach business ethics. A common approach combines philosophy and character development. Teachers impart philosophical concepts for resolving difficult ethical issues and encourage students to develop and hone strength of character to give them the means to actually implement the solutions that develop. Any regular reader of this blog […] View
5 Tips for A Peaceful Holiday Season Happy Ethical Holidays! In his recent book “Drunk Tank Pink,” marketing professor Adam Alter demonstrates how color affects many peoples’ decisions and actions in ways they do not realize or understand. A famous study shows, for example, that men arrested for public intoxication tend to be much less combative if confined in rooms painted pink […] View
Money, Money, Money! It Changes Everything… Money is not the root of all evil, but it changes us in ways that are not always good. So, we should be careful about money if we wish to lead ethical lives. A number of recent studies have primed one group of subjects to think about money (by having them solve word puzzles that […] View
Tools for Teaching Ethics On a day (October 15, 2013) when the New York Times is carrying articles on former San Diego Mayor Bob Filner’s guilty pleas to attacks on women, on an indictment of a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old girl on felony charges in connection with the bullying-caused suicide of another 12-year-old girl, and on possible accounting irregularities […] View
Insider Trading, Genocide, and Why Good People Do Bad Things The business section of the New York Times Sunday edition is often a depressing read, as it was on July 28, 2013 when page BU1 carried a story about Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors and its apparently endemic culture of insider trading. In light of the many convictions and guilty pleas of SAC employees, the government’s allegation […] View