Power, Responsibility, and Accountability: Re-Thinking the Legitimacy of Institutions for Climate Finance

Offers lessons from current mechanisms to finance climate mitigation and adaptation and considerations for legitimacy in new ones: the capacity to determine outcomes, the exercise of power as intended, and standards and systems to ensure accountability

The Effect of Celebrity Gaze-Cueing on Binary Choice Decision Making

Marketers have long used celebrities in advertisements to help viewers build strong brand and product associations; however, it is not well understood how the celebrity and the visual context affect visual attention to and, ultimately, consumer decision making for the endorsed product. Most prior studies have focused on qualitative surveys about brand equity, memory of the advertisement, and self-reported interest and intent to purchase. My study uses new methods from applied neuroscience that allow me both to directly measure and to analyze how celebrities in static advertisements impact consumer decisions that do not require measures of verbal self-report. Furthermore, research has shown that humans automatically divert their visual attention in the direction of another’s gaze, known as “gaze-cueing” or “gaze-following” (Friesen and Kingstone, 1998; Kuhn and Kingstone, 2009). An overwhelming majority of celebrity endorsed advertisements depict celebrities looking at the viewer, not toward the endorsed product, though academic research suggests that gaze-cueing at the product (instead of toward the viewer) increases visual attention toward the endorsed product (Hutton and Nolte, 2011). My project tests whether the increase in visual attention due to gaze-cueing at the product translates into an increase in the consumer’s subjective value of that product and consequently influences product choice. Results indicate that celebrity interventions in advertisements increased the subjective value of endorsed products yet, interestingly, did not drive more overt visual attention to them. Moreover, gaze-cueing was found to have a pronounced effect on guiding visual attention. These advertising cues impact choice, which could translate into larger profits for competitive consumer products

Rethinking the Kyoto Protocol: Are There Legal Solutions to Global Warming and Climate Change?

Professor Williams moderates a panel discussion of the Kyoto Protocol and potential solutions to climate change. Other participants include Anita Halvorssen, J. Kevin Healy, William Pizer, and Jacob Werksman

Leadership Self-Awareness: Important For You and Your Team

Universities such as Harvard Business School and many global organizations are beginning to understand the importance of soft skills, such as self-awareness, and the influences they have on leadership success. A leader’s leadership experience and whether they are a recipient of leadership coaching or not can influence their self-awareness levels as a leader. A leader’s self-awareness levels have influence on how effective they are with their verbal workplace communication, trust, and turnover intention among teammates. Though leadership and self-awareness are two well-known topics, the topic of leadership self-awareness is one that has not been thoroughly researched. Better understanding if self-awareness differs between leaders based on their leadership experience and whether they are a recipient of leadership coaching or not as well as the affects a leader with or without self-awareness will have on their verbal workplace communication skills, trust, and turnover intention among their team will be addressed within this research. If decisionmakers within an organization can identify the effects leaders with self-awareness have and it can be measured, decision-makers would be better postured to implement quality leadership development trainings targeting the positive influence of a leader’s self-awareness before making a promotion. Self-awareness among leaders has been proven to lead to higher individual and organizational performance. Therefore, this research provides theoretical implications to gaps within the domain of leadership and self-awareness as well as self-leadership theory. Practical implications found in this research will assist leaders in having self-awareness which will lead to higher personal and organizational performance