Max H. Bazerman > Quotes

“Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change. —Confucius”
― Max H. Bazerman, Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It

“Consider the recent financial crisis and its link to faulty reward systems. President Bill Clinton's objective of increasing homeownership by rewarding potential home buyers and lenders is one example. The Clinton administration "went to ridiculous lengths" to increase homeownership in the United State, promoting "paper-thin down payments" and pushing lenders to give mortgage loans to unqualified buyers according to Business Week editor Peter Coy.”
― Max H. Bazerman

“Without an awareness of blind spots, traditional approaches to ethics won’t be particularly useful in improving behavior. If, like most people, you routinely fail to recognize the ethical components of decisions, succumb to common cognitive biases, and think you behave more unethically than you actually do, then being taught which ethical judgment you should make is unlikely to improve your ethicality.”
― Max H. Bazerman, Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It

“Bruce’s strategy had little to do with changing people’s values and everything to do with motivating them to change their behavior, with little or no sacrifice required.”
― Max H. Bazerman, Better, Not Perfect: Making Wiser Decisions to Create More Good in The World

“The forces that oppose wise reforms typically present their own distorted view of the “facts.” When their positions become untenable and maintaining the status quo is impossible, these groups simply change their position and deny their past connection to claims that they now acknowledge, in the face of overwhelming evidence, to be clearly false.”
― Max H. Bazerman, Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It

“THE CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE: When we have expertise or knowledge in a given area, we have difficulty understanding what the problem would look like to those who lack such expertise or knowledge.4 Thus, teachers often lack empathy for students who lack their knowledge”
― Max H. Bazerman, Better, Not Perfect: Making Wiser Decisions to Create More Good in The World

“Philosopher John Rawls offered the image of a “veil of ignorance” as a means of thinking through what would be best for society.22 Rawls’s challenge is to imagine that you know nothing about your position in society. In this uninformed state, behind a veil of ignorance, you will be in a better position to decide how society should be structured for the greater good. Rawls intuitively understood that your status, wealth, position, and so on form cognitive barriers to objectively assessing”
― Max H. Bazerman, Better, Not Perfect: Making Wiser Decisions to Create More Good in The World

“We glaze over the zeroes in the quantity and make decisions in reaction to emotional images.”
― Max H. Bazerman, Better, Not Perfect: Making Wiser Decisions to Create More Good in The World

“THE CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE: When we have expertise or knowledge in a given area, we have difficulty understanding what the problem would look like to those who lack such expertise or knowledge.4 Thus, teachers often lack empathy for students who lack their knowledge.”
― Max H. Bazerman, Better, Not Perfect: Making Wiser Decisions to Create More Good in The World

“One of the advantages of groups over individuals is that they collectively
possess more information than any individual member does. In organizations, one
of the reasons to create groups is to pool information from different divisions
(Mannix & Neale, 2005). Thus, sharing unique information is a critical source of
group potential, both in an absolute sense and in comparison to individual
decision-making. Yet Stasser and his colleagues (Stasser, 1988; Stasser & Stewart,
1992; Stasser & Titus, 1985), as well as others (e.g., Gruenfeld, Mannix, Williams,
& Neale, 1996), show a consistent tendency of groups to focus more on shared
information (information group members already have) than on unique or
unshared information (information known by only one group member).”
― Max H. Bazerman, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making

“Scope neglect and the identifiable victim effect encourage our intuitive innumeracy and lead to poor decision making. In contrast, most of us would endorse the goal of choosing behaviors—such as contributing money or investing our time—where we can do as much good as possible, rather than simply feeling like we made a difference.”
― Max H. Bazerman, Better, Not Perfect: Making Wiser Decisions to Create More Good in The World

“Don Moore and I outlined the following steps for choosing the right option among multiple choices:17 Define the problem. Identify the relevant criteria. Weight the criteria. Generate alternatives. Rate each alternative on each criterion. Compute the optimal decision.”
― Max H. Bazerman, Better, Not Perfect: Making Wiser Decisions to Create More Good in The World

“Looking back at the four sources of bias described in the previous section (innumeracy, warm glow and recognition, connectivity, and self-focus), you’ll see they all put you at the center: your intuition over the correct numbers, your identification with the victim, your sense of recognition, your connection, and your tendency to focus on yourself. Creating more value in the world requires that we think beyond ourselves. A good starting point is to consider our two primary modes of decision making—System 1 and System 2.”
― Max H. Bazerman, Better, Not Perfect: Making Wiser Decisions to Create More Good in The World

“His point was that each positive step a person takes should be encouraged, rather than highlighted for what it lacks.”
― Max H. Bazerman, Better, Not Perfect: Making Wiser Decisions to Create More Good in The World

“illusory transparency of intent.”
― Max H. Bazerman, Better, Not Perfect: Making Wiser Decisions to Create More Good in The World

“Republicans typically fight against new taxes and cuts in defense spending, while Democrats resist cuts to social services. Both sides believe they are defending ethical principles. Yet they both pursue their political agenda while collectively ignoring the unethical financial mess they are leaving for future generations.”
― Max H. Bazerman, Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It

“each positive step a person takes should be encouraged, rather than highlighted for what it lacks.”
― Max H. Bazerman, Better, Not Perfect: Making Wiser Decisions to Create More Good in The World