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Anatomy of an Organization: an Ethnographic Approach to Understanding the History and Ethics of the American Psychiatric Association

Although all medical specialties have come under scrutiny for financial conflicts of interest, the field of psychiatry has been at the epicenter of this "crisis of credibility" (Fava, 2006). Researchers, investigative journalists, and policy makers have raised questions about the extent of industry influence on the diagnostic and practice guidelines developed by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).... Read more about Anatomy of an Organization: an Ethnographic Approach to Understanding the History and Ethics of the American Psychiatric Association

Auditors

Abigail Brown's primary project at the Lab is to write a book, using archival firm evidence and other historical methods, to trace the development of the financial statement auditing profession into an entity that could fairly be describes as one suffering from institutional corruption. Parallel to the main book project, she is writing a series of economic articles that develop rigorously the theory that provides the foundation for the book's analysis of qualitative data.... Read more about Auditors

Conflicts of Interest and the Potential and Pitfalls of Disclosure

Professionals are often influenced by conflicts of interest when they have a personal, often material, interest in giving biased advice. Although disclosure (informing advisees about the conflict of interest) is often proposed as a solution to problems caused by such conflicts, prior research has found both positive and negative effects of disclosure.

The principal investigator of this project is Sunita Sah. Sunita's interest in disclosure or sunshine policies is to understand when they work and when they do not.... Read more about Conflicts of Interest and the Potential and Pitfalls of Disclosure

Corruption and Justification in the Ghost Management of Medical Research

Professor Sergio Sismondo has been working to detail the key mechanisms by which which pharmaceutical companies establish dominance over particular areas of medical knowledge. He has been looking at, for example, the ghosting of articles for medical science journals and at drug companies' recruitment and management of physicians to serve as "key opinion leaders". In his project at the Safra Center, he is studying how people justify their work to manage medical knowledge, as well as at how physicians and researchers justify their involvement with the drug industry.... Read more about Corruption and Justification in the Ghost Management of Medical Research

Creative or Corrupt? How Wikipedians Decide If a New Contribution Is "good" or "bad"

Creativity is the introduction of a novel and appropriate idea or product into a community that transforms the community in some way. Corruption is the decay or redirection of community resources away from a community's purpose toward a self-interested end. Both creativity and corruption alter the possibilities available to later community contributors. In an empirical study of seven contentious Wikipedia pages, Fellow Seana Moran explores: How does the editing community decide, at the time a novel contribution is made, whether it is creative and should be kept, or corrupt and should be removed or blocked? How long does this evaluation take? What evaluative criteria are used?... Read more about Creative or Corrupt? How Wikipedians Decide If a New Contribution Is "good" or "bad"

Cultural Cognition and Public Campaign Financing

Working in conjunction with the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, the Cultural Cognition Project is conducting an empirical investigation of how cultural cognition influences perceptions of the desirability, efficacy, and importance of public financing of political campaigns. "Cultural Cognition" refers to a set of psychological mechanisms that motivate individuals to fit their beliefs about policy-consequential facts to their preferred visions of the ideal society. Concepts and methods featureing cultural cognition have been used to understand public disagreements over myriad issues, from gun control to climate change.... Read more about Cultural Cognition and Public Campaign Financing

Did Campaign Contributions and Congressional Corruption Lead to the Global Financial Crisis?

Surveys show that the majority of people believe Congress is rife with corruption (e.g. World Values Survey 2000). Despite this public consensus, scholarship on the topic is quite mixed, largely because most studies employ a "market model" in which desired policy outcomes are assumed to be purchased by contributors (Gordon 2005). A "social model" better captures the reality-a reality in which desired policy outcomes are gifted via an ongoing friendly, albeit corrupting, reciprocal relationship (e.g. Clawson, Neustadtl, and Weller 1998; Gordon 2005).... Read more about Did Campaign Contributions and Congressional Corruption Lead to the Global Financial Crisis?

Ethical Nudges

The principal investigator of this project is Sreedhari D. Desai. In this project, Sreedhari and her colleagues use laboratory and field experiments to investigate the role of ethical nudges, or non-coercive ways of leading people down moral pathways. In one segment of this project, they investigated how displaying cues such as moral quotations at the bottom of emails and pictures of moral leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi can trigger implicit psychological processes such that people feel discouraged from behaving unethically.... Read more about Ethical Nudges

Following the Money? Lobbying and Congressional Staff Careers in Washington, 2000-2010

In the last two decades, the lobbying industry has assumed a central role among Washington’s policy-making institutions. Importantly, a large fraction of lobbyists employed in the Federal industry have experience in government positions, especially posts in Congress, the White House and leading executive agencies.

The movement of political staffers from roles in the government to lucrative jobs in the lobbying industry is often described as a ‘revolving door’.... Read more about Following the Money? Lobbying and Congressional Staff Careers in Washington, 2000-2010

Legal Ambiguity and Organizational Noncompliance

The principal investigator of this project is Yuval Feldman. The focus of this research is to understand the psychological processes that mediate and moderate the effect of ambiguity in law on rule-following behaviors of individuals in organizations. Although recent research suggests that when people face ambiguity, they may be more likely to rely on their own self-interest to guide their behavior, either deliberately or unknowingly, this project will demonstrate that in an organizational context, the picture is more complex.... Read more about Legal Ambiguity and Organizational Noncompliance

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