Faculty and Research

Bounded Ethicality

In contrast to the search for the few “bad apples”, my colleagues and I argue that the majority of unethical events occur as the result of ordinary and predictable psychological processes. As a result, even good people engage in unethical behavior, without their own awareness, on a regular basis. This argument is developed and documented in much of my recent work. Representative Publications

Want/Should Conflicts

Building off of research that I conducted in the 1990s on the internal conflict that many of us have between what we want to do versus what we think we should do, and on work in the time discounting literature, my current colleagues (Katy Milkman, John Beshears, and Todd Rogers) and I explore how this internal conflict plays out in a variety of real world markets. We are currently working on fascinating data from an online grocer and an online video firm. Our goals are to bring insights from behavioral decision research into the field, while maintaining the rigor of analysis common to behavioral decision research and behavioral economics.  Representative Publications

Societal Decision Making

In recent years, an increasing percentage of my time is devoted to societal decision making. This work focuses on predictable surprises, barriers to wise trade-offs, and environmental decision making. Representative Publications

Bounded Awareness

Bounded awareness argues that humans often fail to perceive and process easily available and important information.  Our research identifies the systematically and predictable patterns that govern this failure. Representative Publications