Tag Archive for: Nicholas Epley

Is Creative Talent Critical to Ethical Systems Design?

In March, Ethical Systems hosted its second “Ethics by Design” conference. It showcased not just the expertise of top behavioral-science researchers and business practitioners, but also the challenges—both empirical and managerial—that…

2016 Collaborators in the News: A Year of Many Achievements

2016 was a year of many achievements for our growing collaborator network. We invite you to browse a highlight list of the research, articles, appearances and talks that helped advance our mission and promote a greater understanding of ethics, decision making, and ethical systems design.

Browse our collaborators and their highlights and achievements from this year >>

Featured Collaborator for September: Nick Epley

Interview with Nick Epley, author of "Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want" and professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business

 

I study mind reading. Not the nonsensical, spooky or supernatural versions of it, but rather the very natural and intuitive version of it that we do whenever we make an inference about another person’s mind. We do this arguably every social interaction we have when we wonder what someone else is thinking, believing, feeling, or wanting. This is hard to do accurately because another person’s mind is inherently invisible. 

You can’t see another person’s thought, hold a want, or poke a feeling. As a result, our inferences about the minds of others are far less than perfect, and we are consistently less accurate than we think we are. I’m most interested in understanding these gaps between our inferences about each other and reality. The mistakes we make are a common source of unnecessary conflict in everyday life.

Framing the Language of Business

Framing is not just how you present a painting. Framing helps to communicate the type of art, it complements subject matter, and it influences how the viewer perceives the image. Framing also matters when it comes to business, and the language we use can deeply affect both the rules we follow and those we are willing to break.

While business has its own lexicon, a new piece in Ethisphere by Scott Killingsworth, Senior Counsel with Bryan Cave LLP in Atlanta, illustrates that when we couch the business of business in terms of war and gamification, we prime the pump for pernicious results.

Poisoning the Well: The impact of incivility in the workplace

Culture matters more than any other factor in determining the level of ethical conduct within an organization. Knowing this, leaders need to be ever vigilant to how toxic day to day interactions can poison the working environment.

Christina Porath, associate professor at Georgetown University and co-author of “The Cost of Bad Behavior” recently published an op-ed and online quiz (“No Time to Be Nice at Work,” Sunday, June 21, 2015) in The New York Times illuminating the dramatic degree in which courtesy and consideration in the workplace actually impact individuals. 

2014 Highlights from Our Collaborators

2014 was a busy year. Here are some of the highlights from our collaborators. Dan Ariely’s work on cheating and honesty is being turned into a documentary called (Dis)Honesty: The Truth about Lies Max Bazerman has a new book called…

The Operating System (OS) of Ethical Business

Bryan Johnson recently made a $100 million gift to launch the OS Fund. The OS Fund invests in bold, high-return ideas that “promise to reinvent the operating systems of life.” Why is this relevant to ethical systems design? Because we’re…

Featured Collaborator of the Month: Nicholas Epley

Featured Collaborator of the Month: Professor Nicholas Epley, author of Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want is the featured collaborator of the month for November.  This section includes: An…

Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want

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Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want by Nicholas Epley Knopf, Borzoi Books (2014) Summarized by Bryan Turner   Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want is a book…