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I podcast, so I'm used to restarting my
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[laughter] sentences.
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Hi, I'm Sophie Jabar. I'm a new
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assistant professor in the legal studies
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and business ethics department with a
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secondary appointment in philosophy. I'm
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from Boulder, Colorado, but I spent most
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of the last 12 years living in and
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around Boston. My research focus is on
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the ethics of influencing people's
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behavior. So, topics like manipulation,
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coercion, blackmail, and deception. My
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interest in this topic actually goes
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back to college. So I wrote my senior
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thesis on the idea of nudge policies.
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Policies that unlike taxes or bans don't
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impose sort of significant costs on
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people as a result of their behavior,
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but they rather just nudge them in the
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right direction by using insights from
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behavioral psychology. And back when I
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was writing about this, critics were
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worried that these policies were not
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only wrongfully paternalistic but also
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manipulative. and I became interested in
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whether that was true and more generally
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what we can and can't do to influence
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people's [music] behavior. I think what
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I'm most excited about coming to Wharton
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is working with my colleagues in legal
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studies and business ethics, [music]
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especially those with a background in
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law, which I myself don't have. I think
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there's a lot that we can learn from,
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especially things [music] like the ways
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in which we regulate deception in
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advertising and marketing. [music] There
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are lots of interesting lines that we
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draw there which might tell us something
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about the ethics of deception in
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everyday life.
