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So a friend of mine was riding
in a taxi to the airport the other day,

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and on the way, she was chatting
with the taxi driver,

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and he said to her, with total sincerity,

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"I can tell you are a really good person."

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And when she told me this story later,

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she said she couldn't believe
how good it made her feel,

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that it meant a lot to her.

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Now that may seem
like a strong reaction from my friend

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to the words of a total stranger,

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but she's not alone.

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I'm a social scientist.

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I study the psychology of good people,

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and research in my field says
many of us care deeply

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about feeling like a good person
and being seen as a good person.

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Now, your definition of "good person"
and your definition of "good person"

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and maybe the taxi driver's
definition of "good person" --

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we may not all have the same definition,

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but within whatever our definition is,

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that moral identity
is important to many of us.

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Now, if somebody challenges it,
like they question us for a joke we tell,

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or maybe we say
our workforce is homogenous,

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or a slippery business expense,

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we go into red-zone defensiveness
a lot of the time.

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I mean, sometimes we call out

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all the ways in which we help
people from marginalized groups,

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or we donate to charity,

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or the hours we volunteer to nonprofits.

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We work to protect
that good person identity.

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It's important to many of us.

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But what if I told you this?

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What if I told you that our attachment
to being good people

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is getting in the way
of us being better people?

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What if I told you that our definition
of "good person" is so narrow,

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it's scientifically impossible to meet?

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And what if I told you
the path to being better people

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just begins with letting go
of being a good person?

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Now, let me tell you a little bit
about the research

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about how the human mind works

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to explain.

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The brain relies on shortcuts
to do a lot of its work.

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That means a lot of the time,

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your mental processes are taking place
outside of your awareness,

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like in low-battery, low-power mode
in the back of your mind.

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That's, in fact, the premise
of bounded rationality.

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Bounded rationality is
the Nobel Prize-winning idea

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that the human mind
has limited storage resources,

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limited processing power,

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and as a result, it relies on shortcuts
to do a lot of its work.

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So for example,

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some scientists estimate
that in any given moment ...

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Better, better click, right? There we go.

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(Laughter)

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At any given moment,

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11 million pieces of information
are coming into your mind.

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Eleven million.

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And only 40 of them
are being processed consciously.

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So 11 million, 40.

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I mean, has this ever happened to you?

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Have you ever had
a really busy day at work,

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and you drive home,

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and when you get in the door,

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you realize you don't
even remember the drive home,

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like whether you had
green lights or red lights.

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You don't even remember.
You were on autopilot.

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Or have you ever opened the fridge,

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looked for the butter,

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swore there is no butter,

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and then realized the butter
was right in front of you the whole time?

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These are the kinds of "whoops" moments
that make us giggle,

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and this is what happens in a brain

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that can handle 11 million
pieces of information coming in

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with only 40 being processed consciously.

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That's the bounded part
of bounded rationality.

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This work on bounded rationality

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is what's inspired work I've done
with my collaborators

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Max Bazerman and Mahzarin Banaji,

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on what we call bounded ethicality.

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So it's the same premise
as bounded rationality,

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that we have a human mind
that is bounded in some sort of way

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and relying on shortcuts,

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and that those shortcuts
can sometimes lead us astray.

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With bounded rationality,

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perhaps it affects the cereal
we buy in the grocery store,

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or the product we launch in the boardroom.

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With bounded ethicality, the human mind,

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the same human mind,

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is making decisions,

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and here, it's about who to hire next,

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or what joke to tell

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or that slippery business decision.

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So let me give you an example
of bounded ethicality at work.

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Unconscious bias is one place

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where we see the effects
of bounded ethicality.

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So unconscious bias refers
to associations we have in our mind,

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the shortcuts your brain is using
to organize information,

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very likely outside of your awareness,

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not necessarily lining up
with your conscious beliefs.

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Researchers Nosek, Banaji and Greenwald

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have looked at data
from millions of people,

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and what they've found is, for example,

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most white Americans
can more quickly and easily

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associate white people and good things

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than black people and good things,

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and most men and women
can more quickly and easily associate

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men and science than women and science.

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And these associations
don't necessarily line up

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with what people consciously think.

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They may have
very egalitarian views, in fact.

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So sometimes, that 11 million
and that 40 just don't line up.

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And here's another example:

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conflicts of interest.

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So we tend to underestimate
how much a small gift --

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imagine a ballpoint pen or dinner --

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how much that small gift
can affect our decision making.

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We don't realize that our mind
is unconsciously lining up evidence

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to support the point of view
of the gift-giver,

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no matter how hard we're consciously
trying to be objective and professional.

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We also see bounded ethicality --

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despite our attachment
to being good people,

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we still make mistakes,

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and we make mistakes
that sometimes hurt other people,

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that sometimes promote injustice,

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despite our best attempts,

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and we explain away our mistakes
rather than learning from them.

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Like, for example,

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when I got an email
from a female student in my class

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saying that a reading I had assigned,

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a reading I had been assigning for years,

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was sexist.

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Or when I confused
two students in my class

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of the same race --

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look nothing alike --

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when I confused them for each other

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more than once, in front of everybody.

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These kinds of mistakes send us, send me,

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into red-zone defensiveness.

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They leave us fighting
for that good person identity.

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But the latest work that I've been doing
on bounded ethicality with Mary Kern

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says that we're not
only prone to mistakes --

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that tendency towards mistakes depends
on how close we are to that red zone.

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So most of the time, nobody's challenging
our good person identity,

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and so we're not thinking too much

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about the ethical implications
of our decisions,

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and our model shows
that we're then spiraling

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towards less and less
ethical behavior most of the time.

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On the other hand, somebody
might challenge our identity,

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or, upon reflection,
we may be challenging it ourselves.

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So the ethical implications
of our decisions become really salient,

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and in those cases, we spiral towards
more and more good person behavior,

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or, to be more precise,

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towards more and more behavior
that makes us feel like a good person,

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which isn't always the same, of course.

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The idea with bounded ethicality

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is that we are perhaps overestimating

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the importance our inner compass
is playing in our ethical decisions.

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We perhaps are overestimating
how much our self-interest

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is driving our decisions,

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and perhaps we don't realize
how much our self-view as a good person

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is affecting our behavior,

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that in fact, we're working so hard
to protect that good person identity,

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to keep out of that red zone,

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that we're not actually giving ourselves
space to learn from our mistakes

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and actually be better people.

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It's perhaps because
we expect it to be easy.

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We have this definition
of good person that's either-or.

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Either you are a good person
or you're not.

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Either you have integrity or you don't.

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Either you are a racist or a sexist
or a homophobe or you're not.

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And in this either-or definition,
there's no room to grow.

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And by the way,

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this is not what we do
in most parts of our lives.

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Life, if you needed to learn accounting,

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you would take an accounting class,

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or if you become a parent,

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we pick up a book and we read about it.

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We talk to experts,

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we learn from our mistakes,

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we update our knowledge,

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we just keep getting better.

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But when it comes to being a good person,

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we think it's something
we're just supposed to know,

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we're just supposed to do,

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without the benefit of effort or growth.

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So what I've been thinking about

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is what if we were to just forget
about being good people,

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just let it go,

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and instead, set a higher standard,

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a higher standard
of being a good-ish person?

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A good-ish person
absolutely still makes mistakes.

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As a good-ish person,
I'm making them all the time.

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But as a good-ish person,
I'm trying to learn from them, own them.

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I expect them and I go after them.

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I understand there are costs
to these mistakes.

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When it comes to issues like ethics
and bias and diversity and inclusion,

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there are real costs to real people,

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and I accept that.

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As a good-ish person, in fact,

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I become better
at noticing my own mistakes.

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I don't wait for people to point them out.

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I practice finding them,

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and as a result ...

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Sure, sometimes it can be embarrassing,

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it can be uncomfortable.

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We put ourselves
in a vulnerable place, sometimes.

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But through all that vulnerability,

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just like in everything else
we've tried to ever get better at,

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we see progress.

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We see growth.

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We allow ourselves to get better.

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Why wouldn't we give ourselves that?

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In every other part of our lives,
we give ourselves room to grow --

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except in this one, where it matters most.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)