The Hidden Insights Evolution Has for Healthy Businesses

Charles Darwin ended The Origin of Species, his argument for evolution by natural selection, on a note of celebrated eloquence. “There is grandeur to this view of life,” he wrote, “with its several powers, having been originally breathed…

How to Make Lying at Your Company Normal

Earlier this month at the Beacon Theater, in New York City, Daniel Kahneman, famed author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, had a conversation with neuroscientist Sam Harris. It ranged over many of the topics the Nobel Prize-winning behavioral scientist…

Socialism and Conflicts of Interest

There was a time in my life when I might have embraced the cause of socialism, but that was many years ago, and today I proudly march under the banner of centrism. And the current flirtation with socialism in the U.S. has me worried—at least…

Wall Street and the Behavioral Science of Making Culture Ethical

Re-establishing trust, particularly at the organizational level, is essential in repairing the damage that we witnessed during and after the 2008 crisis. Before he became “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Jordan Belfort, when he arrived in…
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The Paradox of Employee Surveillance

This piece was originally published in Behavioral Scientist magazine. For many people, the global financial crisis eroded trust in corporations and government. There was a double-digit decline in trust of large banks in particular, dropping…

Listen to Adam Grant Talk Leadership Science with Preet Bharara

It is safe to say that I am a podcast junkie. Whenever I find myself “ears-free”—while taking a shower, walking the dog, riding the subway—I listen to an episode. Usually it is intellectual fare—scientists or other sorts of scholars…

New Evidence in Favor of Active Internal Whistleblowing

Over two decades ago, two of the largest corporate bankruptcies in U.S. history sprung up one after another—first Enron, then WorldCom—after the companies became mired in accounting and financial fraud.  In 2002, in response to these…

How to Avoid Becoming the Next Wells Fargo

Last year, in September, CNN Business ran the headline, “The two-year Wells Fargo horror story just won’t end.”   By now, many have heard how it all began: In 2016 it was revealed that the bank fired over 5,300 employees for…

End of Year Letter, 2018, from Jon Haidt and Azish Filabi

Stop the World—I Want to Get Off. The title of that 1960s musical captures a timeless sentiment, but it seems more common in recent years, and is perhaps especially on the minds of leaders of organizations and their ethics-and-compliance…
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Behavioral sciences inform public policy in Australia

In Australia the public hearings at the Royal Commission into misconduct in the financial services industry came to an end last week. Over the past year there have been 68 hearing days and 138 witnesses called to give evidence to the inquiry.…