Yale School of Management - Faculty

Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior

Dr. Cain’s research focuses on "judgment and decision making" and “behavioral business ethics" – in other words, he studies the reasons that smart people do dumb things, good people do bad things. Cain is a leading expert on conflicts of interest, exploring the psychological tension between selfish and altruistic preferences as well as the “perverse effects of disclosing conflicts of interest.” Cain’s work has been discussed in The New Yorker, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, The Washington Post, BusinessWeek, USA Today, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, featured on CNN Financial News, and mentioned in the recent book Economics 2.0: What the Best Minds in Economics Can Teach You about Business and Life.

An award-winning educator, Cain currently teaches "Business Ethics Meets Behavioral Economics" and "Negotiations: Beyond Win-Win."

Selected Achievements and Awards
Society of Business Ethics and Wheatley Institution's "Master Teacher in Ethics Award," 2012

Yale SOM's Elective Teacher of the Year, 2011

Society of Business Ethics (SBE) Paper of the Year, 2010

"The Dirt on Coming Clean: Perverse Effects of Disclosing Conflicts of Interest," which won the Herb Simon dissertation award, was recently named among the most relevant research studies on fiduciary reform (by the Committee for the Fiduciary Standard)

Selected Books
Conflicts of Interest: Problems and Solutions from Law, Medicine, and Organizational Settings (with D.A. Moore, and G. Loewenstein, and M. Bazerman, eds.), Cambridge University Press, 2005

Selected Articles
"The Burden of Disclosure: Increased Compliance with Distrusted Advice" (with S. Sah and G. Loewenstein), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming

"Making Sense of Overconfidence in Market Entry" (with D. Moore and U. Haran), Strategic Management Journal, forthcoming

"Giving vs. Giving-in" (with J. Dana and G. Newman), Academy of Management Annals, forthcoming

"The Unintended Consequences of Conflict of Interest Disclosure"(with G. Loewenstein and S. Sah), Journal of the American Medical Association, 2012

"Pitfalls and Potential of Disclosing Conflicts of Interest," (with G. Loewenstein and S. Sah), American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, 2011

"When Sunlight Fails to Disinfect," (with G. Loewenstein and D. A. Moore), Journal of Consumer Research, 2011

Selected Working Papers
"Paying People to Look at The Consequences of Their Actions" (with J. Dana)

"Who is the Fairest of them All? Using Justice Sensitivity to Predict Genuine Altruism" (with S. Lotz, T. Schlosser, and D. Fetchenhauer)

"The More the Merrier: Perverse Effects of Additional Victims on Ethical Judgments" (with U. Haran)

"Authentic Altruism and the Myth of Win-Win" (with G. Newman)

Education
Russell Sage Fellow, Harvard University, 2006 - 2007
PhD Carnegie Mellon University, 2007
MS Carnegie Mellon University, 2003
MA UNC-Chapel Hill, 2002
MA, Dalhousie University, 1997
First Class Honor's BA, Dalhousie University, 1996