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Tomasz Piotr Wisniewski, Liafisu Sina Yekini, and Ayman M. A. Omar posted “Psychopathic Traits of Corporate Leadership as Predictors of Future Stock Returns” on SSRN on June 13, 2017. You can find their abstract here. 

I was particularly interested in how the authors measured psychopathy. Here is a relevant excerpt:

Using UK data, we construct a number of corporate psychopathy indicators and link them to the returns that ensue over the next 250 trading days – a period roughly equivalent to one calendar year.

Even if clear guidance exists on how to diagnose psychopathic personality disorder in humans (Hare 1991, 2003), the practical difficulty is that executives will be generally unwilling to participate in time consuming surveys, particularly those that are likely to expose the dark side of their character. We choose to follow a more pragmatic approach and, similarly to Chatterjee and Hambrick (2007), collect information in an unobtrusive way by going through company-related archives and data. Firstly, using automated content analysis we assess to what extent the language in annual report narratives is symptomatic of psychopathy. This is done by counting the frequency of words that are aggressive, characteristic of speakers who are self-absorbed and who have…

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While I am already looking forward to returning to the classroom in the fall, one of the reasons that I love summers is that I get to catch up on reading. It has been an embarrassingly long time since I have finished a fiction book, but I am committed to making fiction an increasing percentage of my reading.  

Percy’s Moviegoer won the 1962 National Book Award. I have my brother Will to thank for the recommendation and for the book itself. The novel focuses on the life of a New Orleans area stockbroker “Binx” Bolling, and his search for meaning. I won’t ruin the story for those who have not read it, but I was moved by the Binx’s struggle against what he called the malaise and everydayness. Binx appears to be a pretty sad character, spending a good bit of time hiding from life in movie theaters and engaging in flings with his secretaries, but he can also inspire the reader to ask serious questions, engage in meaningful relationships, and live more intentionally. 

Recently, I participated in a focus group on running shoes for Brooks. A few years ago, I did something similar for New Balance. 

Brooks paid each participant $100 for 90 minutes. 

The group was well-facilitated, and the group members stayed incredibly engaged. The 90-minutes flew by.

The research Brooks was conducting on both shoe design and marketing was extremely qualitative. It was essentially a brainstorming session. I do think Brooks could have gotten more out of the time if they would have had everyone privately write down their own ideas first, as there were about three or four of the ten of us who dominated the discussion. 

While this type of focus group was not cheap—$1000 in payment plus renting the room plus travel for two employees from Seattle—it was surely a very small fraction of their production and marketing budget. And I do think Brooks got some valuable ideas. Brooks does this sort of thing all over the country, and their employees said that they do start to hear patterns in the responses. It is those patterns that Brooks acts on, as they can’t possibly address every one-off comment. 

This focus group made me think that universities should consider similar focus groups with…

Interesting research has been done on overconfidence in business leadership (see, e.g., here, here, and here) and political behavior (see, e.g., here and here).  I periodically consult the literature in this area for use in my work.  It is fascinating and often helpful.

In my continuing career development advice to law students, and as a member of our faculty appointments committee at UT Law this year, however, I recently have come to notice and be concerned about overconfidence in job searches.  Specifically, I see law students who, in testing out a new confidence in their knowledge and skills, overdo it a bit and over-claim or come across as unduly self-important.  I also see faculty candidates who have registered for the Association of American Law Schools Faculty Appointments Register (FAR) puff and oversell–using the comment areas to make cringe-worthy self-aggrandizing statements about their teaching or scholarly background or abilities.

Most of us prefer to associate with confident people.  Confidence in a leader or colleague is an attractive trait–one that we associate with strong governance and high levels of performance.  Confidence wins appointments, elections, and jobs.  Yet overconfidence, if recognized, is unattractive and often means lost opportunities.

Overconfidence is common.  Don Moore…

As many of you know, I often like to post on issues relating to advising students (witness my cover letter posts, the most recent of which can be found here).  I also like to post from time to time on issues relating to fashion and the law (e.g., this post).  And sometimes, I fuse the two in a single post.  This post is one of those fusion posts.

Many of us intuitively understand that clothing affects not only the perceptions others have of us but also the perceptions we have of ourselves.  Some of us may even have done research to unearth evidence that these intuitions have some empirical traction.  But can what you wear affect your performance?  Research provides some evidence that it can.

Researchers at Northwestern University have identified a “systematic influence that clothes have on the wearer’s psychological processes” that they term “unclothed cognition.”  Their research, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology in 2012, found that the attentiveness of the subjects was higher when wearing a lab coat than it was when they were not wearing a lab coat or were wearing a lab coat described as a painter’s coat. The research was…

I have been following Professor Angela Duckworth’s work on grit for well over a year, so I was eager to read her new book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I bought and read a book within a few weeks of it being published.  

The book is an easy read, written for a for a popular audience, and I was able to finish it in three relatively short sittings.

Below, I reflect on the book, hopefully in a balanced way. 

Thesis. As may be evident from previous posts of mine, I like Duckworth’s thesis – essentially, that passion and perseverance in pursuit of long-term goals are important in achieving success. Duckworth is careful to caveat her thesis, noting at hard work and passion are important, but are not the only factors that matter in achieving success. With this caveat, her thesis seems rather obvious and uninteresting.

Grit Scale. The Grit Scale Duckworth created for her studies seems easy to fake, and to her credit, she admits that it can be faked, like most self-reporting measures. Given the ability to fake the Grit Scale, I am not sure that it would be of much…

I recently finished Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (2016) by Angela Duckworth (Penn Psychology).

Next week, I will post some reflections on the contents of the book, but for now, I would like to discuss professors publishing for a popular audience. Tongue-twisting alliteration unintended.  

I am thankful that Duckworth wrote this book for a popular audience rather than in a way that would target a narrow slice of academia. Even as a professor myself, I find books written for popular audience easier to digest, especially if in a different discipline. While popular press books often oversimplify, I would rather a professor author a popular press book on her studies (and studies in her field) than have a journalist attempt to explain them. Also, while a popular press book may oversimplify, professors tend to be intentional about avoiding claims that are too sweeping. Note that in this interview, like the book, Duckworth is careful to state that grit is not the only thing that contributes to success. Finally, especially when the professor has done the background academic work first, as Duckworth did in many peer-reviewed journal articles, a popular press book can reach more people and inspire change and may…

I recently listened to a podcast on temptation bundling, featuring the work of Katherine Milkman (Wharton). 

Temptation bundling is explained here and here by Katherine Milkman, who (I believe) coined the term.

In short, temptation bundling is putting something you want to do together with something you should do. 

Temptation bundling can make both activities more enjoyable — you feel better about the want activity because you also accomplished a should activity, and the should activity is less difficult because it is married with a want activity. For example, temptation bundling is what I have been doing with podcast listening; I only listen to podcasts (want) when I workout (should).

Below are a few temptation bundles that might work for professors:

  • Drinking caffeinated drinks only while researching;
  • Listening to your favorite music only while grading; and
  • Eating chocolate only when in faculty meetings.

Happy New Year!

Last year I wrote a bit about New Year’s resolutions.

As some of you know, I wasn’t able to go the full year without checking my e-mail on Saturdays. In fact, that resolution was toast a few weeks into 2015.

One of the problems, I think, was that I had 20 resolutions in 2015. We all have limited self-control, and we can experience overload in January.

I have been doing New Year’s resolutions for as long as I can remember, with varied amounts of success, but I am going to try something a bit different this year.

The Cass Sunstein article I included last year gave me the idea. In the article, he states “But how can we ensure that our resolutions actually stick? Behavioral economists have three answers: Make them easy and automatic, make them a matter of habit, and make them fun. A resolution is more likely to work if it is concrete and can be translated into a simple routine.”

This year, instead of a long list of resolutions, I plan to focus on forming one habit each month. I hope the habits will continue after that month, but after one month of intense focus…