Marketers have a choice of what to tell consumers and consumers must consider what they are told or not told. Across six experiments, we show that consumers fail to differentiate between deliberate and non-deliberate missing information (strategic naiveté) and make generous inferences when they...

Professionals face conflicts-of-interest when they have a personal interest in giving biased advice. Mandatory disclosure — informing consumers of the conflict — is a widely adopted strategy in numerous professions, such as medicine, finance, and accounting. Prior research has, however,...

Conflicts of interest create an incentive for advisors to give biased advice, and disclosure is a popular remedy. Across a series of studies, with monetary stakes creating conflicts of interest, I show that disclosure of the conflict of interest can increase as well as decrease bias in advice....

Pharmaceutical and medical device companies apply social psychology to influence physicians’ prescribing behavior and decision-making. Physicians fail to recognize their vulnerability to commercial influences; due to self-serving bias, rationalization, and cognitive dissonance. Professionalism...

Racial minorities are disproportionately imprisoned in the United States. This disparity is unlikely to be due solely to differences in criminal behavior. Behavioral science research has documented that prosecutors harbor unconscious racial biases. These unconscious biases play a role whenever...

The recently-documented “morning morality effect” indicates that people act most ethically in the morning because their energy wanes with the day. An estimated 40% of the population, however, experience increased energy levels later in the day. These “evening people,” we propose, should...

Professionalism is often viewed, in the management literature and in practice, as a desirable sought-after trait in employees and managers. This belief, however, does not consider a potential dark side of professionalism. A high self-concept of professionalism often coexists with a shallow...