Aaron Miller - How to Help (Page 14)

Mar 26, 2024 Blog

How We Measure Poverty Changes Things

Poverty is a multi-dimensional issue, even if we tend to think of all poverty in the same way. But it’s possible to measure poverty using a wide range of different factors. What gets measured can shift perceptions and policies in big ways.

"The study examined four widely used poverty measurement approaches. Each metric is based on different priorities ranging from reported assets, such as appliances, to self-defined well-being milestones, such as being able to send children to school. Working with colleagues in Ethiopia, Ghana, and Uganda, the Stanford researchers surveyed 16,150 households. Surprisingly, the research revealed almost no agreement in how these approaches ranked households by poverty status. The lack of agreement persisted even among households classified in the bottom 20% in terms of poverty."

Why Our Definition of Poverty Matters | Greater Good Science Center

Mar 25, 2024 Blog

Ethics Advice from GPT-4 Is Quite Good

At least, GPT-4 is able to give the same quality of advice that an expert gives. Both laypeople and ethics experts rated the GPT-4 advice quite highly.

This was similar to my experience when I first tested ChatGPT against some dilemmas from our book, The Business Ethics Field Guide. I found that the responses it generated were much better than the average BYU undergrad business student.

It’s worth noting that the dilemmas presented were short, text-based summaries. It would be interesting to see how well GPT-4 performs in an ongoing dialogue that invites more nuance. Still, it’s quite exciting to think of a day when expert ethics advice is there at everyone’s fingertips. Will people use it, though?

"This study investigates the efficacy of an AI-based ethical advisor using the GPT-4 model. Drawing from a pool of ethical dilemmas published in the New York Times column “The Ethicist”, we compared the ethical advice given by the human expert and author of the column, Dr. Kwame Anthony Appiah, with AI-generated advice. The comparison is done by evaluating the perceived usefulness of the ethical advice across three distinct groups: random subjects recruited from an online platform, Wharton MBA students, and a panel of ethical decision-making experts comprising academics and clergy. Our findings revealed no significant difference in the perceived value of the advice between human generated ethical advice and AI-generated ethical advice. When forced to choose between the two sources of advice, the random subjects recruited online displayed a slight but significant preference for the AI-generated advice, selecting it 60% of the time, while MBA students and the expert panel showed no significant preference."

SSRN | Terwiesch & Meinke

Mar 18, 2024 Blog

Company performance when the CEO shows care

Hot off the presses at Academy of Management Discoveries is this new paper about leaders who express compassion. Basically, if a CEO expressed concern for people during Covid-era earnings calls, their companies had better stock performance. This is true even if their statements were “vague expressions.”

It’s a gated paper, but I’ve linked to the pre-publication version at SSRN.

“When we explored archival data of how CEOs of publicly traded U.S.-based companies from the Russell 3000 Index spoke about COVID-19 in conference calls as the pandemic began in 2020, we noticed that about half of CEOs made human care statements that expressed a concern for people, with seemingly little direct financial relevance. However, although these statements were largely generic, vague expressions rather than clear plans, we discovered that the more such statements CEOs made, the better their companies fared on the stock market when stock prices tumbled globally…Our explorations suggest that it pays off for CEOs to go beyond mere financial information and show some humanity, with implications for downstream theorizing about CEO impression management.”

CEOs Showing Humanity: Seemingly Generic Human Care Statements in Conference Calls and Stock Market Performance During Crisis | Howe, et al

Mar 15, 2024 Blog

We Underestimate Our Small Acts of Kindness

Self-doubt and negativity bias often keep us from reaching out to others in kind ways. But the research shows that when we do reach out, our seemingly small efforts usually do more good than we realize.

“Research suggests, across multiple studies, that people have overwhelmingly similar impulses to not do the nice thing: They underestimate how much other people value the reach-out, the random act of kindness. These seemingly minor deeds are appreciated, though. Turning down the naysaying voice in your head allows for more opportunities to show warmth to those around you.”

Why do we assume people don’t like us? Our small acts of kindness matter. | Vox

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