Jay Van Bavel, PhD

New paper by Hallgeir Sjåstad, Jareef Martuza, and @jayvanbavel that every academic should read: "Avoiding the worst leaders is more important than getting the best" Abstract: Society and organizations invest heavily in selecting the best leaders 1, and existing research shows a positivity bias by focusing on the bright side of leadership 2–4. Yet, according to Popper 5, the central question of institutional design is not who should rule, but how to prevent bad leaders from doing too much damage. This raises the question of which approach is more consistent with human psychology: Aim for the best leaders, or avoid the worst? We provide robust evidence for an “avoid-the-worst” principle in human leadership preferences. Although text analyses indicated that the top 100 business schools emphasize good leadership far more than the prevention of bad leadership, actual employee experiences from 9.9 million Glassdoor reviews show that people mentioned their leader 70% more often in the negative than positive section, and negative leader mentions predicted company ratings 1.5 times more strongly. Providing causal evidence, five high-powered experiments across 40 countries (N = 51,433) revealed that people were more willing to sacrifice time and money to avoid a bad leader than obtaining a good leader—across morality and competence, hypothetical and incentivized choice, ideology and culture. People care more about avoiding the worst leaders than getting the best. Link below.