Stats and Curiosities. Harvard Business Review

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      male professionals with higher ethical standards earn less

      Although companies have focused greater attention on the need for ethical practices over the past few decades, male business professionals who self-report high ethical character earn, on average, 3.4% less than their peers who don’t report having such standards, according to an analysis of data on thousands of students by Andrew Hussey of the University of Memphis. Moreover, men who reported that their MBA programs enhanced their ethical standards received 6.5% lower wages than men who reported no such gain. For women, the situation is different: female professionals who self-report high ethical standards receive no pay penalty, and women who said that their schooling had raised their standards received a premium averaging 5.5%.

      richer executives are more likely to be indicted for insider trading

      Executives who are indicted for insider trading tend to be just as rich as or richer than other top managers. In fact, the likelihood of being indicted on this charge increases with compensation and wealth, according to a study of 52 accused executives by Utpal Bhattacharya of Indiana University and Cassandra D. Marshall of the University of Richmond. The motive for the crime thus may have more to do with hubris or company culture than a desire for money. The benefit that Martha Stewart would have received from her alleged insider trading was just 0.007% of her $650 million net worth in 2001, the authors say.

      making plans to be good can cause you to act badly

      Planning ahead is usually seen as beneficial for self-control. But in a study of people with low savings who got a US stimulus rebate in 2008, those who were instructed by researchers to plan their use of the money ended up spending about 38% more of it on purchases as opposed to saving or investing, say Claudia Townsend of the University of Miami and Wendy Liu of UC San Diego. There was no such effect for people with high savings. That’s because if you’re already behind on a goal, planning to further the goal can be stressful and can undermine your self-control, the researchers suggest.

      what happens to your smartphone after you lose it

      72% of people who found “lost” smartphones in five cities tried to access photos, 57% tried to open a file named “Saved Passwords,” and 43% tried to open an app named “Online Banking.” Symantec’s experiment involving 50 phones deliberately left in food courts, restrooms, and other locations also showed that just half of the finders tried to contact the owners, whose phone numbers and e-mail addresses were prominently shown in the phones’ contact lists, according to Credit.com’s report on the study.

      high percentage of hybrid drivers ignore pedestrians in crosswalks

      About one-third of drivers of Prius hybrids failed to yield to pedestrians in a series of experiments on crosswalks in the San Francisco Bay area, giving the brand one of the highest rankings for “unethical driving,” say psychologist Paul Piff of the University of California, Berkeley, and a team of colleagues. Drivers of hybrids “who believe they’re saving the Earth may feel entitled to behave unethically in other ways,” says Piff, who is quoted on news.sciencemag.org.

      people lie more in e-mails than face-to-face

      When getting to know new people, about 70% of people lie about things ranging from their feelings to their achievements, but the incidence of deception is higher over e-mail than in face-to-face meetings, say Mattitiyahu Zimbler and Robert S. Feldman of the University of Massachusetts. In a study of undergraduates’ 15-minute conversations with same-sex individuals, those using e-mail had 5 times more lies per word communicated than those speaking face-to-face. Lying appears to be more common when the communicator is psychologically and physically distant from the person receiving the message, the researchers say.

      volunteerism drops as governments raise social spending

      An increase in government spending on social benefits by 1 percentage point of GDP decreases an individual’s likelihood of volunteering for religious, sports, arts, or any other kind of organization by about 2 percentage points, say Franz Hackl, Martin Halla, and Gerald J. Pruckner of the University of Linz in Austria. Another factor that diminishes volunteerism is the population’s confidence in its elected officials. Among the countries with the smallest proportions of adults doing unpaid work are Hungary, Japan, and Spain, at 16%; at the other end of the spectrum are Sweden, the Slovak Republic, and the United States, with volunteer rates of 56%, 54%, and 50%, respectively.

      why kenyan bus passengers yell at their drivers

      Inexpensive messages urging Kenyan minibus passengers to heckle and criticize their drivers for being reckless caused a 60% reduction in insurance claims involving injury or death, say James Habyarimana and William Jack of Georgetown University. Stickers carrying messages aimed at passengers such as “Don’t СКАЧАТЬ