Earlier this week, I happend to be on the same plane with Chip Heath of Made to Stick and Switch fame, a friend I have known for years, long before either of us were writing books and we were focused only on writing academic articles. There was a long flight delay (apparently due to red tape at American Airlines, at least that was what the pilot complained about repeatedly.. I guess communication is a problem at AA as he said "we are always the last know" several times.. and in fact the AA website posted the correct departure time before he was informed of it).
So we had a lot of time to talk. We talked a lot about the new books we are each trying to write and traded ideas about studies and stories that might help one another develop our ideas.
At one point, Chip told me about an intriguing study that his brother (and co-author) Dan had written about in Fast Company in 2009, one that I found fascinating. The upshot is that people who were instructed to to rely on their "gut feelings" were far more ethical than those who were instructed to be "rational" and disregard their emotions.
This is Dan's lovely summary — go here for the rest of the story:
Consider a provocative series of experiments conducted by Chen-Bo Zhong of the University of Toronto. He put test subjects into interactions with an anonymous partner where they had two options: to treat their partners fairly or to lie to them. If they decided to lie, they would gain at the expense of their partners.
Before making the decision to cheat or be fair, the test subjects were given some guidance. Some were encouraged to think rationally about the situation and to ignore their emotions. Equipped with this advice, the great majority (69%) analyzed the situation and concluded that they should screw their partners. Others were primed to "make decisions based on gut feelings." Their guts were pretty trustworthy: Only 27% lied.
There's a twist: Even though the study shows that we would be treated better by people who trust their feelings, we're leery of them. When people were given a choice to interact with a rational decision-making partner or a gut-trusting one, 75% chose the rational partner.
Zhong concluded that "deliberative processes can license morally questionable behaviors by focusing on tangible monetary outcomes and reducing emotional influence."'
Now, as Dan suggests, think of bias in business against "feelings" and for "rationality," a bias implied in the "twist" that he reports. It is pretty scary. It is also scary to see how many people lied… even 27% in the "feeling" condition and 69%, over two-thirds, in the "rational" condition. This study is also consistent with other research that shows, when people are focused on money, they turn individualistic and selfish, so there is other evidence that a narrow focus can lead to all sorts of destructive behavior.
The implications here for practice are, however, quite interesting. As Chip explained as we chatted on that delayed flight, this little study suggests that when you are trying to promote ethical behavior, you should say things to others (and yourself) like "Don't just focus on winning and on how much money you are going to make, also think about how you are going to feel about yourself afterwards — will you be proud or ashamed?" I like that advice, and indeed, as I watch some of the dreadful behavior by both politicians and executives, perhaps it might help them (and the rest of us) if they chanted this little mantra often.
Perhaps a more simple way to put it is, "How will you feel about yourself later?" Not a bad mantra for all of us.
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