About

Emma Levine's research focuses on the ethical and psychological aspects of lying and honesty, examining how people perceive and respond to deception in various contexts, including leadership, relationships, and organizational settings.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Social psychology
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Epistemology
• Medicine
• Public relations
• Law

Selected publications

• Timeline of Social Mobility: The Barriers to Social Class Mobility in Education and Employment

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  article

  The widening inequity between the upper and lower social classes threaten societal health and the very foundational principles of equal opportunity in the United States. Even more concerning is the trend of declining social mobility in the United States. In this symposium, we discuss the numerous barriers to social mobility that individuals from lower class backgrounds face in their lifelong pursuit of upwards mobility. We examine these challenges at key life events at which individuals should be able to better their chances for upwards social mobility (e.g., college admissions, first employment out of college), and also examine the experiences of those who successfully achieve upwards mobility. The findings from this symposium highlight why social mobility is so elusive, even with the support of the most well-intentioned and strategized policies. How Interpretations of Socioeconomic Advantage and Disadvantage Influence College Admissions Author: David M. Munguia Gomez; Yale School of Management Author: Emma Levine; Author: L Taylor Phillips; How Social Class Affects Network Positions in College and Subsequent Employment Outcomes Author: Andrew L. Choi; Author: David Obstfeld; Employers’ Targeting of First-Generation College Students for Free Labor: The Case of Unpaid Interns Author: Shuang Wu; University of California San Diego Author: Peter Belmi; University of Virginia The Stickiness of Social Class: Identity & Wellbeing Over Time for The Upwardly Mobile Author: Elizabeth R. Johnson; Harvard Business School Author: L Taylor Phillips;

  PublisherDOI

• Brokered Distances: Trust in Brokers within and Between Organizations

  Organizational Psychology Review · 2025-04-13 · 12 citations

  article

  Organizational brokers, such as producers, diplomats, and middle managers, connect people within and across organizations. Trust in brokers promotes their effectiveness in connecting unfamiliar counterparts and transferring information between disconnected parties. Often, however, the very conditions that create the need for brokering, such as the existence of structural holes, undermine trust in brokers. We introduce an organizing framework to explain how fundamental features of brokering processes shape the perceived trustworthiness of brokers. Specifically, we describe how individuals make inferences about brokers’ ability, benevolence, and integrity based on the horizontal and vertical distances they bridge, the extent to which their brokering involves in-role versus extra-role behavior, and the extent to which they facilitate indirect versus direct exchanges between counterparts. Our model links situational features of brokering processes with established antecedents of interpersonal trust, thereby identifying challenges and opportunities for brokers and organizations.

  PublisherDOI

• Difficult conversations as self-regulatory conflicts

  2025-07-08

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Why do people fail to initiate important but difficult conversations? The dominant explanation in extant literature is that people are overly pessimistic about the outcomes of having these conversations. From this perspective, motivating conversational engagement should be as simple as correcting this misperception. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that people still delay having conversations they expect will be more beneficial than costly, suggesting the pessimism account may be incomplete. We address this puzzle by proving the first empirical test of a self-regulatory account of difficult conversations. We argue that difficult conversations often involve both expecting positive outcomes following a conversation and a negative experience while having it. Like other self-regulatory conflicts—such as going to the gym or eating healthily—initiating difficult conversations involves choosing an uncomfortable, short-term experience to obtain a positive, long-term outcome. Across three experiments with U.S. adults (online, university lab; N = 976), we show that conversational decisions are similarly sensitive to time: people are more willing to initiate conversations in the future (vs. now). However, it is not the case that people want to put off conversation generally because this effect is specific to conversations for which the benefits are expected to outweigh the costs. Furthermore, people are aware of this self-regulatory dynamic: they are willing to use costly commitment devices to get themselves to have the conversation. In sum, we provide the first empirical test of a self-regulatory account of difficult conversations, highlighting a new mechanism driving conversational avoidance.

  PublisherDOI

• Trust in Focus: Theoretical Advances and Practical Implications

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  articleSenior author

  Trust is a cornerstone of human relationships and a foundational construct in management research, influencing outcomes such as cooperation, team performance, and organizational effectiveness (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002; Fulmer & Gelfand, 2012; Mayer et al., 1995). While extensively studied, trust remains a multifaceted phenomenon that continues to challenge scholars seeking to understand its mechanisms, dynamics, and broader implications. This symposium advances trust research by uncovering novel antecedents of trust from relational and identity perspectives and exploring its downstream effects in two critical domains: the workplace and healthcare. These contexts are central to individuals’ lives and represent settings where trust has profound implications for relational dynamics, performance, and well-being. By integrating truster- and trustee-centered perspectives, this symposium provides a richer understanding of how trust is shaped, expressed, and eroded across diverse relational environments. Existing research often emphasizes the trustor’s perceptions of another's trustworthiness and the factors that shape these perceptions (Colquitt et al., 2007). However, trust is a dynamic construct influenced by relationships, individual differences, context, and culture, warranting deeper exploration. The first two presentations focus on trust within organizations, examining it from the trustor's perspective. The first paper explores asymmetries in the formation and dissolution of professional ties, revealing their distinct impacts on trust development. The second paper introduces the concept of “trusting identity,” reframing trust as an expression of self-concept rather than merely an evaluation of others’ trustworthiness. Shifting to the trustee's perspective, the latter two studies examine trust between employees and clients in the healthcare context, where trust between patients and providers is crucial for effective communication, treatment adherence, and positive health outcomes (Hall et al., 2011). The third paper investigates how patients’ perceptions of being trusted by their providers influence engagement with care. The fourth paper explores cultural mismatches in communication preferences, illustrating how these misalignments erode trust in patient-provider relationships. Collectively, these studies extend trust research by addressing its nuanced antecedents, relational dynamics, and cultural dimensions. They demonstrate that trust is not merely about fostering interpersonal confidence but also about understanding how trust operates across different contexts and identities. We enrich the trust literature by integrating these perspectives and offering actionable insights to build and sustain trust across consequential settings. Movers and shakers: The effect of professional relational mobility on work desirability Author: Jiyin Cao; The Chinese University of Hong Kong Author: Hajo Adam; University of Bath Author: Alvaro San Martin; Author: Yixin Luo; Not Associated Can’t stop, won’t stop…trusting? Building trusting identity into models of trust. Author: Michael Baer; Arizona State University Author: Soohyun Yoon; Arizona State University Author: Rachel Burgess; Arizona State University Behavioral interventions for promoting preventive health: The role of trust Author: Andrea Low; University of California Los Angeles Author: Hengchen Dai; University of California Los Angeles Author: Silvia Saccardo; Author: Craig R Fox; University of California Los Angeles Author: Sitaram Vangala; University of California Los Angeles Author: Richard Leuchter; University of California Los Angeles Author: Jeffrey Fujimoto; Preferences for honesty in medical communication in the U.S. And China Author: Zaijia Liu; Author: Emma Levine; University of Chicago

  PublisherDOI

• The science of honesty: A review and research agenda

  Advances in experimental social psychology · 2025-01-01 · 2 citations

  reviewOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Experience-Outcome Model of Honest Conversation: A Theory of Difficult Conversations Across Situations, People, and Time

  2025-05-16 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In this work, we introduce the Experience-Outcome Model of honest conversation. Our model advances three key ideas. First, a communicator’s decision to initiate a conversation is influenced by their expected experience during a conversation, in addition to the expected outcomes following the conversation. Second, these same factors influence a communicator’s decision to speak truthfully within a conversation, conditional on initiation. Third, when communicators expect the experience of a conversation to be negative but the outcomes of a conversation to be positive, this leads to self-regulatory conflict. After introducing the Experience-Outcome Model, we explain its implications for difficult conversations—conversations that are aversive because they can cause interpersonal harm. The Experience-Outcome Model explains why communicators fail to initiate difficult conversations and why they communicate dishonestly within them, even when communicators expect the conversations to lead to positive outcomes: The negative experience associated with harm aversion creates self-regulatory conflict. Drawing from the literature on self-regulation, we develop six key propositions that explain how psychological distance influences the experience of harm aversion within difficult conversations and, therefore, a communicator’s likelihood of overcoming this conflict. Our model deepens the current understanding of the psychological dynamics underlying honesty and social engagement. By applying the Experience-Outcome Model to difficult conversations, we provide insight into the psychology of self-regulation and everyday harm as well as provide practical guidance on managing, mentoring, and promoting others’ growth.

  PublisherDOI

• Peer Coaching Groups as an Innovative Tool to Foster Performance and Well-being of the Participants

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024-07-09

  article

  Organizations has been using diverse tools to address the needs for the employees' well-being and individual development, investing growing budgets and efforts into this important goals. Peer coaching groups (PCGs) can become a low-cost, inclusive, and adaptive toolset to address these pressing needs. Hundreds of global business communities, Fortune 500 companies, non-profit organizations, and prominent business schools have successfully employed different PCG settings. At the same time, amidst the wide diversity of practitioners' approaches to PCGs, scholarly literature lacks explanation of what factors and why make PCGs effective in fostering the performance, learning, and well-being of the participants. Thus, this panel symposium provides an arena for scholars and practitioners to explore different designs of PCGs: the practitioners will explain their PCGs' designs and engage scholars in a discussion on underlying mechanisms that drive each setting and factors that impact its process and outcomes. As a result, we hope that the audience will learn about the value of PCGs, diverse approaches to designing PCGs, and the theoretical bases of their effectiveness.

  PublisherDOI

• Fostering Connection, Managing Tension: Navigating Difficult Conversations in Organizations

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024-07-09

  article

  Despite the extant research highlighting the benefits of having difficult conversations, its inherent complexity – particularly due to the interdependent, multimodal, and highly contextualized nature of conversation – has impeded its empirical advancement and theoretical integration. Furthermore, previous research has assumed that having, or being able to have, difficult conversations is invariably beneficial for individuals, teams, and organizations. However, exactly how these conversations unfold and lead to positive outcomes remain a mystery. In this symposium, five presentations will explore why and how particular conversational elements within difficult contexts, such as grief, distrust, conflict, diverging goals, and advice giving and seeking, may lead to better or worse outcomes for individuals in organizational settings. In total, the symposium offers empirical and theoretical insights into the burgeoning science of conversation research, as well as practical solutions for managers, leaders, and employees who wish to create spaces where people are heard and feel connected to others. Expressions of Sympathy are Less Effective When They Focus on the Positive Author: Daniel Chiacchia; U. of Toronto, Rotman School of Management Author: Rachel Lise Ruttan; U. of Toronto Author: Katherine Ann DeCelles; U. of Toronto Author: Sora Jun; Rice U. Communicating Under Distrust Author: Laura Wallace; U. of Chicago Booth School of business Author: Yena Kim; U. of Chicago Booth School of business Author: Emma Levine; U. Of Chicago The Social Effects of Discrete Emotions on Curiosity Elicited During Conflict Author: Christina Bradley; U. of Michigan, Ross School of Business Author: Nadav Klein; INSEAD Boomerasking: Answering Your Own Questions Author: Alison Wood Brooks; Harvard U. Author: Michael Yeomans; Imperial College Business School Flattering Advice: Avoiding Disappointment as a Driver of Gender Discrimination Author: Zaidan Chen; Hong Kong U. of Science and Technology Author: David Hagmann; -

  PublisherDOI

• The Science of Honesty: A Review and Research Agenda

  2024-12-16 · 1 citations

  reviewOpen access

  Honesty, defined as freedom from fraud or deception, is widely valued in many aspects of life, from personal relationships to professional settings. Yet acts of dishonesty remain widespread, including political and corporate scandals, misinformation, personal betrayal, and so on. Understanding honesty and the factors that influence it provides insights that are essential for fostering trust and combating corruption. In this review, we synthesize key findings from research on honesty, focusing on when people choose to be truthful or deceptive. We argue that although much is known about honesty in isolated, low-risk contexts, an urgent need exists to study honesty in more complex, realistic settings, such as those involving interpersonal relationships, potential sanctions, or group influences. Our proposed framework highlights understudied contexts and encourages future studies to explore settings where enforcement and social dynamics play a significant role in decision-making. To do so, we point out 66 open research questions that we find most promising to explore. By integrating insights from multiple disciplines, we aim to advance the understanding of honesty and provide a roadmap for research that can inform policies and interventions to promote integrity in society.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Developing Development: Beliefs and Behaviors Driving the Provision of Feedback, Advice, & Coaching

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024-07-09

  article

  In this symposium, we consider the beliefs and behaviors that impact how leaders provide development, ultimately aiming to help leaders create more developmental organizations. In particular, we advance research on developing development by examining how these core beliefs and behaviors underlie the following questions:1) What are the different forms of developmental activities that enable individuals to learn and grow? 2) Who can provide sources of development?, and 3) How is development provided? ). The symposium program brings together research on feedback, advice, and coaching, and considers activities ranging from informal interactions (e.g., seeking feedback or advice) to formalized processes (e.g., annual feedback processes and structured coaching conversations). By bringing together these papers, we enable our field to think more holistically about the wide range of ways people receive development in organizational life with an eye towards improving its outcomes. The Dark Side of Transmitting the Culture in Feedback Author: Paul Isaac Green; U. of Texas at Austin Author: Min Ju Lee; UT Austin Author: Constantinos V. Coutifaris; McCombs School of Business, U. of Texas at Austin Feedback Intuitions Across the East and West Author: Yena Kim; U. of Chicago Booth School of business Author: Raye Zhu; Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern U. Author: Emma Levine; U. Of Chicago Author: Thomas Talhelm; U. of Chicago Booth School of business Author: Thomas Bradford Bitterly; HKUST Business School People Use More Second-Person and Fewer Impersonal Pronouns in Positive vs. Critical Feedback Author: ZhengPeng(Matt) Wang; U. of Toronto Author: Nicole Abi-Esber; Harvard Business School Author: Hayley Blunden; American U., Kogod School of Business Reverse the Curse of Failure: Learning Cues Increase Willingness to Seek (and Share) Failures Author: Xiawei Dong; Hong Kong U. of Science and Technology Author: Martha Jeong; Hong Kong U. of Science and Technology Author: Shaocong Ma; - The Role of Managers’ Developmental Beliefs in Coaching Author: Bushra Sarah Guenoun; Harvard Business School Author: Ting Zhang; Harvard Business School

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Taya R. Cohen

  Carnegie Mellon University

  22 shared

• Maurice E. Schweitzer

  21 shared

• Anne Wagner

  Centre de Théorie et Analyse du Droit

  16 shared

• Stephen Gondek

  Vanderbilt University Medical Center

  16 shared

• Hanna Slutsky

  Vanderbilt University Medical Center

  16 shared

• Elizabeth Slater

  16 shared

• Olatundun Ladele

  Meharry Medical College

  16 shared

• Deborah A. Small

  Whitney Museum of American Art

  15 shared

Labs

• HOPE Lab: Honesty, Opportunity, Prosociality, & EthicsPI

Awards & honors

• Distinguished Alumni Award