Power and Ethics

Dr. Adam Waytz, Associate Professor at the Kellogg School of Management and Organizations at Northwestern University, will speak on the topic, Power and Ethics.   He will discuss how power can both encourage and discourage ethical behavior.   He will also make the case that people in positions of power benefit from behaving ethically.  This phenomenon is because ethical behavior generates professional success, social connection, and happiness.  Finally, Waytz will discuss how ethical disputes between two parties can only be resolved through acknowledging power differences between the parties.  High power people are motivated by different interests than low power people, and successful conflict resolution takes these differences into account.

Adam Waytz’s research uses methods from social psychology and cognitive neuroscience to study the causes and consequences of perceiving mental states in other agents and to investigate processes related to social influence, social connection, meaning-making, and ethics.  His research has been published in leading journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Psychological Review.  Professor Waytz received his B.A. in Psychology from Columbia University and his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Chicago.