Return on Character

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The Human Nature of Leadership

Upgrading an Outdated Model

Predictions about marketplace events involve certain assumptions about human nature. Financial analysts, economists, business school professors, Wall Street bankers, and others who specialize in making such predictions want to understand how our human nature drives us as we make economic choices and business decisions. Since even the most talented analysts can’t possibly have in-depth knowledge about every individual, organization, or event that will influence market trends, they rely on models to inform their understanding and construct their predictions. For a very long time, the accepted model for human nature was Homo Economicus—the “Economic Human,” who, in classic economic theory, ...