When Do Experts Listen to Other Experts? The Role of Negative Information in Expert Evaluations for Novel Projects
Evaluators of early-stage scientific proposals tend to systematically focus on the weaknesses of proposed work rather than its strengths, according to evidence from two field experiments.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyDiscrimination, Disenfranchisement and African American WWII Military Enlistment
The United States entered World War II during one of the worst periods of racial discrimination in post-Civil War history. This paper examines the social costs of this discrimination, with clear implications for policymakers: Requiring equal contributions from citizens means treating citizens equally.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyThe Pursuit of Passion Propagates Privilege
While graduating students are often exhorted to do work they love to do, those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are less likely to feel that they are a fit for and have the skills to thrive in a job that calls for passion.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyScaling Up Behavioral Science Interventions in Online Education
Online courses can lack support structures that are often bundled with traditional higher education. Short pre-course interventions can have short-term benefits, but more innovation throughout the course is needed to have sustained impact on student success.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyPaying It Backward and Forward: Expanding Access to Convalescent Plasma Therapy Through Market Design
Without a vaccine for COVID-19, the medical community has turned to a century-old therapy. This paper discusses a market design approach for expanding the collection and distribution of convalescent plasma.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyGlobal Behaviors and Perceptions at the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic
An online survey of more than 110,000 people in 175 countries conducted at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic found that most respondents believe that their governments and fellow citizens are not doing enough, which heightens their worries and depression levels. Decisive actions and strong leadership from policymakers change how people perceive their governments and other citizens, and in turn improve their mental health.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyTargeting High Ability Entrepreneurs Using Community Information: Mechanism Design in the Field
Based on a field experiment involving 1,345 microentrepreneurs in India, this study provides insight into the depth and breadth of social knowledge contained in rural and peri-urban social networks. Harnessing community information directly from a microentrepreneur’s peers helps to identify high-growth microentrepreneurs and predict their returns to capital.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyChanging In-group Boundaries: The Role of New Immigrant Waves in the US
How do new immigrants affect natives’ views of other minority groups? This work studies the evolution of group boundaries in the United States and indicates that whites living in states receiving more Mexican immigrants recategorize blacks as in-group members, because of the inflow of a new, “affectively” more distant group.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyThe Bulletproof Glass Effect: When Privacy Notices Backfire
Consumers regularly encounter privacy notices explaining if and how their personal information will be collected, stored, used, and shared. Evidence in this study demonstrates that privacy notices, though designed to promote a sense of confidence that personal data will not be misused, can undermine consumer trust and decrease purchase intent.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyWorking (From Home) During a Crisis: Online Social Contributions by Workers During the Coronavirus Shock
This study shows that people working from home (WFH) make more online contributions to socially helpful topics, yet face higher psychic costs and anxiety about time constraints. Managers might consider giving WFH workers more temporal flexibility to deal with time constraints during this crisis.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyNovel Risks
Companies can manage known risks by reducing their likelihood and impact. But such routine risk management often prevents them from recognizing and responding rapidly to novel risks, those not envisioned or seen before. Setting up teams, processes, and capabilities in advance for dealing with unexpected circumstances can protect against their severe consequences.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyFrom Sweetheart to Scapegoat: Brand Selfie-Taking Shapes Consumer Behavior
Using a dataset of more than 280,000 user reviews on Yelp, this paper describes a series of eight studies exploring how brand selfie-taking affects consumers’ behavior and sense of connection toward a brand.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyManagerial Recognition as an Incentive for Innovation Platform Engagement: A Field Experiment and Interview Study at NASA
What gets workers to go the extra mile in creative problem solving? A field experiment and interviews with NASA employees finds that employees respond to managerial appreciation above other incentives.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyWhen to Apply?
Using a series of experiments, the authors studied gender differences in how job-seekers perceive their own qualifications for different opportunities and how this affects their decision to apply. Results suggest that soft touch employer interventions can improve the diversity of applicant pools even if candidate beliefs about their own ability are unchanged.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyWhy Does Business Invest in Education in Emerging Markets? Why Does It Matter?
Drawing on 110 interviews with business leaders as part of the Creating Emerging Markets project at Harvard Business School, this paper represents the first systematic attempt to identify and compare investment in education across emerging economies, specifically in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Turkey, and the Persian Gulf between the 1960s and the present day.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyPersuasion by Populist Propaganda: Evidence from the 2015 Argentine Ballotage
This paper studies data generated prior to the 2015 Argentine presidential ballotage, when a government propaganda campaign was used to attack the opposition candidate and influence voter preferences. Results show the propaganda was persuasive.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyCorporate Purpose and Firm Ownership
This study shows that corporate purpose varies greatly according to the nature of firm ownership, and these differences can be least partly explained by the choices and compensation of the CEOs. The greater the pay gap between CEOs and employees, the lower the sense of corporate purpose within the organization.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyDo Experts Listen to Other Experts? Field Experimental Evidence from Scientific Peer Review
Influence is a fundamental aspect of collective decisions. It is thus crucial to consider not only the composition of evaluation panels but also their deliberation process. This study illuminates drivers of influence among an elite population of experts and contributes to our understanding of resource allocation in science and other expert domains.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyMitigating the Negative Effects of Customer Anxiety Through Access to Human Contact
Firms increasingly deploy self-service technologies (SSTs) to manage customer interfaces that are inherently stressful. For example, patients may be asked to use kiosks to check themselves into hospitals. This study finds that customer anxiety during SST transactions can reduce customers’ trust in the service provider. Operational design choices may help.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyThe Revision Bias
Companies often release revised editions of books, director’s cuts of movies, and technological updates, on the assumption that revising products and services leads to better outcomes. Nine studies, however, document the revision bias: the tendency to prefer things that were revised, regardless of whether the revised versions are objectively better than their predecessors.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyJudgment Aggregation in Creative Production: Evidence from the Movie Industry
Selecting early-stage ideas in creative industries is challenging because consumer taste is hard to predict and the quantity to sift through is large. Using The Black List that ranks scripts annually based on nominations from film executives, this study shows that aggregating expert opinions helps reduce quality uncertainty and can influence high-budget production.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyImmigrant Networking and Collaboration: Survey Evidence from CIC
This study compares United States-born and immigrant entrepreneurs’ use of networking opportunities provided by CIC, the former Cambridge Innovation Center. Immigrants clearly take more advantage of networking opportunities at CIC, especially around the exchange of advice. It remains to be seen whether this generates long-term performance advantages for immigrants.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyStereotypes and Belief Updating
Increasing evidence demonstrates that stereotyped beliefs drive key economic decisions. This paper shows the significant role of self-stereotyping in predicting beliefs about one’s own ability. Stereotypes do not just affect beliefs about ability when information is scarce. In fact, stereotypes color the way information is incorporated into beliefs, perpetuating initial biases.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyTeam Learning Capabilities: A Meso Model of Sustained Innovation and Superior Firm Performance
In strategic management research, the dynamic capabilities framework enables a “helicopter view” of how firms achieve sustainable competitive advantage. This paper focuses on the critical role of work teams, arguing that managers must leverage the knowledge generated by teams to support innovation and strategic change. It matches types of team learning to innovation activities.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyThe Salary Taboo: Privacy Norms and the Diffusion of Information
Barriers to the diffusion of salary information have implications for a wide range of labor market phenomena. This study of employees of a real organization shows that individuals significantly misinterpret their peers’ salaries, partly due to pervasive preferences for concealing own salary, and a potentially strategic decision of high earners to withhold their personal information.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyArbitration with Uninformed Consumers
Using data on securities disputes, this study of information advantages in consumer arbitration finds that industry-friendly arbitrators are 40 percent more likely than consumer-friendly arbitrators to be selected to take on arbitration cases. Limiting respondents’ and claimants’ inputs over the selection process could improve outcomes for consumers.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyWhen Harry Fired Sally: The Double Standard in Punishing Misconduct
Despite committing misconduct less often and less severely than men, female advisers in the financial adviser industry face more severe punishment in the labor market, a finding strongly correlated with the gender composition of the managerial team. A similar punishment gap and mitigating factors affect ethnic minority men.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyThe Impact of Penalties for Wrong Answers on the Gender Gap in Test Scores
Multiple-choice questions on standardized tests are widely seen as objective measures of student ability, but the common practice of assessing penalties for wrong answers may generate gender bias. This study documents the impact of a policy change that removed penalties for wrong answers on the national college entry exam in Chile. This simple change reduced the gender gap in test performance by 9 percent.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyGifts of the Immigrants, Woes of the Natives: Lessons from the Age of Mass Migration
Investigating the economic and political effects of immigration across US cities between 1910 and 1930, this paper finds that political opposition to immigration can arise even when immigrants bring widespread economic benefits. The paper provides evidence that cultural differences between immigrants and natives were responsible, at least in part, for natives’ anti-immigration reactions.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social PsychologyChanneled Attention and Stable Errors
As humans we are surprisingly good at neglecting unexpected information that conflicts with what we “know” to be true. This paper develops a framework for predicting when we are more likely to “get a clue” despite this cognitive barrier to discovering our own mistakes.
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge > Social Psychology