New York, New York, United States
I'm a social psychologist who was happily conducting basic research on moral psychology at the University of Virginia when I stumbled into a business school. I just wanted a way to spend a year in NYC to promote my book The Righteous Mind. I found a temporary position at NYU-Stern, and discovered a whole new way of thinking, a whole new set of opportunities to apply moral psychology. Stern liked me too, and hired me permanently in 2012. My goal at Stern is to use the latest research on moral psychology to make complex social systems (such as firms) work better. Better means higher social and moral capital, and with a greater ability to suppress cheating, self-aggrandizing, and the sort of short term thinking and risk taking that can destroy an organization. I am co-leading a collaborative effort to collect the existing research relevant to this task; see www.EthicalSystems.org. With my lead researcher, Zach Rausch, I write a Substack on my latest research: AfterBabel.com. All articles are free. I also continue to run several efforts to apply moral psychology to the problems of political polarization, demonization, and paralysls; see www.CivilPolitics, and www.Asteroidsclub.org.
I'm trying to apply social and moral psychology to business ethics. I think its very difficult to teach ethics in a course, but I think we can teach MBA students to design ethical systems when they start their own companies or rise to positions of leadership.
I spent the first 16 years of my academic career at UVA, where I conducted the basic research on moral judgment, moral emotions, and political psychology that I report in The Righteous Mind. I also taught Psych 101, and seminar classes on moral, political, and cultural psychology.