120: NYU Professor Dolly Chugh on Bounded Ethicality

Meikles & Dimes

Dolly Chugh is an award-winning psychologist at New York University. She studies how and why most of us, however well-intended, are still prone to race and gender bias, as well as what she calls “bounded ethicality.”

Dolly’s work has been covered on the TODAY Show, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Atlantic, The goop Podcast, NPR, Dr. Phil, and other media outlets. And Dolly’s TED Talk was named one of the 25 Most Popular TED Talks of 2018 and currently has more than 5 million views.

Prior to becoming an academic, Dolly worked at Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and Time Inc. Dolly earned a psychology and economics degree from Cornell University and an MBA, M.A. and PhD from Harvard.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Just as our brains are limited in how quickly they can process and store information (bounded rationality), our brains are also limited when it comes to ethical decision making (bounded ethicality).
• By using systems, we can safeguard ourselves against some of our biases. So, for example, rather than just hiring for fit, and possibly perpetuating inequality, we can formalize the hiring system and hire for behavioral competencies.
• Just as we need financial literacy to understand finance and how to invest, we also need psychological literacy to understand ethics and how to behave ethically.

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Book: https://amzn.to/4aPkPHh

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