June 2011
1 post
I'm over here now. →
May 2011
3 posts
2 tags
The Doormat Problem
New findings (via Eric Barker) on the dark side of forgiveness:
The tendency to express forgiveness may lead offenders to feel free to offend again by removing unwanted consequences for their behavior (e.g., anger, criticism, rejection, loneliness) that would otherwise discourage reoffending.
Consistent with this possibility, the current longitudinal study of newlywed couples revealed a...
4 tags
If People Trust Scientists, Why Don't They Trust...
In this month’s Scientific American, Daniel Willingham describes a friend who clings ferociously to the discredited belief that vaccines cause autism. The puzzle?
“My friend insists that he trusts scientists. In this respect, he is like most Americans. In a 2008 survey by the National Science Foundation, more respondents expressed “a great deal” of confidence in science leaders...
“Countries can get caught in a trust trap in which inequality and mistrust feed...”
– A fascinating entry (“In Equality We Trust”) in the NY Times’ Economix blog about the effects of income inequality on trust and vice versa.
April 2011
3 posts
5 tags
Is Not Voting Really A Sign Of Trust?
In the Ottawa Citizen, Will Wilkinson of the Cato Institute assures us that record-low voter turnout is nothing to worry about. In fact, he argues, it’s a sign of social cohesion:
Contrary to the folklore of democratic health, low turnout can signal social solidarity, reflect real civic virtue, and even make democracy work better.
We humans are adversarial beings, easily riled by...
4 tags
Do Republicans really distrust government?
Are Republicans really suspicious of government? Maybe not.
Mike Sances presents some data over at The Monkey Cage that suggest that both Democrats and Republicans’ trust in government is essentially a partisan matter: Republicans are more trusting of Republican officeholders, while Democrats tend to be more trusting of government when Democrats are in office.
This bolsters Fabio...
February 2011
4 posts
3 tags
Social Dilemmas in University Admissions
Early university admission programs tend to be unfair: The offers are made before financial aid decisions, meaning they can only really be taken by the wealthy. Harvard and Princeton got rid of them, in part, on this basis.
Only problem: Nobody followed suit. Other universities continued to offer early admission, and this week, both Harvard and Princeton decided they no longer wanted to be...
“Complete contracts are inevitably imperfect. So what’s better: a complete...”
– Dan Ariely. Real talk.
3 tags
4 tags
Is Trust Built Differently in the Arab Middle...
Via Tyler Cowen, an interesting paper (ungated PDF here) comparing trust in the Arab Middle East (Jordan, Saudi, UAE) and in the United States:
“Mechanisms aimed at mitigating the cost of betrayal, such as damages or insurance provision, seem to work better in the United States, and arrangements focusing on preventing the occurrence of betrayal, such as a punishment threat, have...
January 2011
2 posts
Trust is good for your health. →
Eric Barker notes some recent research linking trust to physiological well-being, an effect mediated through reduced anxiety. Trust more, worry less, feel better.
“Conservative politicians can credibly commit that they will not compromise while...”
– Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution shares some interesting Gallup data on conservative and liberal Americans’ attitudes toward compromise. Liberals are open to compromise in order to accomplish things; conservatives are more prone to stick to their guns even at the cost of getting things...
December 2010
3 posts
2 tags
The Payload: Distrust
The Stuxnet virus was a sophisticated attack on the Siemens control systems used by Iran’s nuclear programme. Its payload was code that damaged centrifuge arrays by speeding up their rotation rates.
But a recent article (via Daring Fireball) emphasizes another impact of the virus: It created costly suspicion and distrust.
One additional impact that can be attributed to the worm,...
November 2010
3 posts
2 tags
Job Autonomy and the Asshole TSA Agent
The TSA (Transportation and Security Adminstration, or, as I’ve heard them described in the wake of their ‘enhanced patdown’ policy, the Testicle Searchers of America) just keep getting hammered by reports of untoward, unprofessional and downright illegal behaviour on the part of its staff. In the past couple weeks, I’ve read a number of stories describing questionable...
“Recently, second-generation forgiveness scholars like Ryan Fehr have pushed the...”
– The Sorry Scholars, Chronicle of Higher Education.
My most recent border crossing interview
Customs and Border Protection agent: Any meats, fruits, vegetables or other food to declare?
Me: Yes. Several packets of Tim-Tams.
CBP agent: Tim-Tams?
Me: Yes. They're these chocolate biscu--
CBP agent, interrupting: Oh, believe me, sir. We know what Tim-Tams are.
(A 5-minute discussion on the merits of various Tim-Tam flavours then ensued)
October 2010
3 posts
1 tag
“To his indescribable dismay, a colleague here learned this week that students...”
– UCF’s Marshall Schminke this week on the AOM’s OB listserv.
Test banks, for the unacquainted, are large lists of potential test questions that publishers often bundle with desk copies of popular textbooks. It has come to the point where textbook vendors often sell desk copies that...
2 tags
Sometimes the missing data tell the real story
Lasse Lien:
“During World War 2 the British Royal Air Force (and Navy) pioneered the use of empirical and statistical analysis to improve performance. The RAF collected large amounts of data on exactly where returning aircraft had received damage [from German air-defence fire]. The intuitive recommendation would be to reinforce the aircrafts were the data indicated they took the most...
"Can We Infer Social Preferences from the Lab?... →
Nicole Baran, Paola Sapienza and Luigi Zingales got a bunch of MBA students to play the Trust Game, an economic game where partners exchange money. From the students’ behaviour in the laboratory, they assigned them scores on their tendency to reciprocate.
They then compared these scores to MBA students’ pledges in a graduating-class donation campaign. (They argue that this kind of...
August 2010
1 post
1 tag
July 2010
8 posts
Why Are Scholars So Scholastic? (Or, Why Don't...
On Twitter, GMU historian Dan Cohen (@dancohen) writes:
Twice today I have read that scholars only want to read comments on their work by other scholars. Why?
Let’s presume that this is true, and that there is a tendency in the social sciences to prefer comments from fellow academics to interaction with non-academics. Here are four (pretty obvious) reasons that spring to mind for me:
...
Behavioral games and real life outcomes →
Economic games in the lab are cute. But do they really relate to real world problems?
Delia Baldassarri has a post up about her experience with experimental public-goods games and the agricultural economics of Ugandan farmer co-ops. A great read.
1 tag
“Somewhat ironically, harsh public rhetoric can help smooth the way to successful...”
–
Julie Browne and Eric Dickson, ‘We don’t talk to terrorists’: On the rhetoric and practice of secret negotiations, Journal of Conflict Resolution 54(3), 379-407.
Refusal to negotiate is a common posture in statecraft. Hamas refuses to negotiate with Israel. Turkey refuses to...
“Race is the life experience that has the biggest impact on trust.”
–
Generalized trust is diminished among black Americans firsthand by experiences of bias and from contending with social and physical disorder in their neighbourhoods, then secondhand through bias socialization.
Something I found particularly interesting: Racial minorities tend to be lower in...
“Trusting behavior is distinct from a more general tendency to take risks”
–
Trust is often described in terms of your willingness to make yourself vulnerable to others. It’s a type of risk-taking. But some recent research by Derfler-Rozin, Pillutla and Thau (gated PDF at OBDHP) adds to the evidence that trusting as social risk-taking is completely different from asocial...
June 2010
1 post
“I would go into a lunch of stockbrokers who would be coming to listen to the...”
– John Armstrong, the ‘philosopher in residence’ at Melbourne Business School, in a self-deprecating interview about philosophy and business education
April 2010
1 post
3 tags
February 2010
1 post
2 tags
On Blaming the Victim
About a year ago, I wrote a short post discussing the role of negotiation in the wage gap. Short version: Women don’t tend to negotiate as frequently or view as many situations as ‘negotiable’. When it comes to the labour market, the difference between those who negotiate employment terms and those who don’t is a yawning gulf. A gender difference in attitudes about...
December 2009
2 posts
3 tags
"Everyday they don't never come correct"
Interesting post this evening over at Regret The Error describing how a Washington Post journalist got skewered over a copy editor’s mistake in the WaPo “9/11 is a joke” corrections miniscandal.
For those who missed it, a Post story referred to that classic Public Enemy jawn as if it were about the 9/11 terrorist attacks rather than the 9-1-1 emergency system. Hilarity...
November 2009
2 posts
4 tags
“It’s probably wrong to pillage the planet in celebration of Christmas, but...”
– Wharton’s Joel Waldfogel’s work on the economic waste and inefficiency of Christmas gifts is featured in the Globe today.
I’ve been reading quite a bit about gift-giving as part of a paper that deals with the notion of favours and gifts in trust building. One of the reasons I...
October 2009
1 post
Don't Worry, Hippies Aren't All Liars and Thieves
Here’s a brief excerpt from a Globe and Mail article titled, ‘Green consumers more likely to steal and lie’:
“Pop quiz: You need $20 for lunch and can only ask one person for a loan. Do you ask a) the eco-conscious vegetarian who only buys green cleaning products, or b) the Hummer-driving meathead who says Al Gore is overrated. If you choose person A – assuming she cares...
August 2009
1 post
4 tags
“15th out of 18”
– — The importance of forgiveness, in a list of 18 values as ranked by a sample of American managers. (Source)
There’s evidence to believe that people value forgiveness in their personal lives. But when it comes to economic contexts, they seem to leave that value at the door....
April 2009
1 post
What I Meant To Say, Of Course, Is That Everything...
Earlier this year, Genome Canada had its funding yanked, to the dismay of the Canadian and international scientific communities. On the day of the announcement, the Genome Canada president agonized:
“We got nothing, nothing, and we don’t know why. We’re devastated.”
Then, a day later, the Genome Canada website has a message from its Board of Directors...
March 2009
5 posts
“Diane Sieber, an associate professor [at the University of Colorado at Boulder]...”
– (Source)
As a task-performance study, it’s kind of lacking. Hard to separate the effect of task feedback from the changes in laptop use. But it’s still interesting for those of us who encourage note-taking and other course work using laptops.
The Kids Are Alright
The blogosphere is abuzz about a survey conducted by the Boston Public Health Commission found that teens had strikingly permissive attitudes toward domestic violence. The Commission conducted an informal poll of 200 Boston youths, aged 12-19, asking them about their attitudes toward Chris Brown’s abuse of Rihanna. Nearly half the teens thought fighting was normal in relationships, that...
AOM Tweeps →
I’ve started a directory to make it easier to find Academy of Management folks on Twitter. Let me know who I’m missing.
February 2009
11 posts
Researchers struggle as Ottawa scales back funding →
Via the Globe and Mail:
“After federal funding dried up, one of Canada’s top researchers had to scramble to find private donations to continue an ambitious experiment that aims to identify children most at risk of developing serious cognitive and behavioural disorders.
At the same time, the researcher, McGill University’s Michael Meaney, was asked to establish a similar...
