I am occasionally asked for additional resources (beyond our free videos, cases, and other materials) for those trying to learn about behavioral ethics. Toward that end, I include below a list of 25 books that I think would be very helpful to anyone wishing to learn more about the topic of behavioral ethics. The most accessible books are probably Bazerman & Tenbrunsel’s Blind Spots and Francesca Gino’s Sidetracked. The two best might well be Albert Bandura’s 2016 book, Moral Disengagement and Joshua Greene’s Moral Tribes. This is not an inclusive list, but it’s a good start. Some of the books go beyond behavioral ethics if that term is strictly defined, but are still helpful. One book I didn’t list, Eugene Soltes’ Why They Do It: Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal (2016) gives many examples of how behavioral ethics concepts underlie much of the wrongdoing in the great scandals of the last couple of decades.
Top 25 books for the Behavioral Ethicist
Dan Ariely, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves (2012)
Mahzarin Banaji & Anthony Greenwald, Blind Spot: Hidden Biases of Good People (2013)
Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm and Live with Themselves (2016)
Paul Bloom, Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil (2013)
Max Bazerman & Ann Tenbrunsel, Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What’s Right and What to Do About It (2011)
Jean Decety & Thalia Wheatley (eds), The Moral Brain: A Multidisciplinary Perspective (2015)
David De Cremer (ed.), Psychological Perspectives on Ethical Behavior and Decision Making (2009)
David De Cremer & Ann Tenbrunsel (eds.), Behavioral Business Ethics: Shaping an Emerging Field (2012)
David Desteno, The Truth About Trust: How It Determines Success in Life, Love, Learning, and More (2014)
David DeSteno & Piercarlo Valdesolo, Out of Character: Surprising Truths About the Liar, Cheat, Sinner (and Saint) Lurking in All of Us (2011)
David Edmonds, Would You Kill the Fat Man? The Trolley Problem and What Your Answer Tells Us about Right and Wrong (2014)
Francesca Gino, Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan (2013)
Joshua Greene, Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them (2013)
Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012)
Mark Hauser, Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong (2006)
Margaret Heffernan, Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril (2011)
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)
Dachler Keltner, Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life (2009)
John Mikhail, Elements of Moral Cognition: Rawls’ Linguistic Analogy and the Cognitive Science of Moral and Legal Judgment (2011)
Mark Pagel, Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind (2012)
Jesse Prinz, The Emotional Construction of Morals (2007)
Deborah Rhode (ed.), Moral Leadership: The Theory and Practice of Power, Judgment, and Policy (2006)
Laurence Tancredi, Hardwired Behavior: What Neuroscience Reveals About Morality (2005)
Patricia Werhane et al., Obstacles to Ethical Decision-Making: Mental Models, Milgram and the Problem of Obedience (2013)
Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (2007)