DAVID DE STENO is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University where he studies the ways in which emotions guide decisions and behaviors fundamental to social living. By examining moral and economic behaviors such as compassion and trust, cooperation and resilience, and dishonesty and prejudice, his work tries to illuminate how emotions can optimize our actions in favor of the greater good or, by virtue of bugs in the system, lead to suboptimal or biased outcomes. His research continually shows that human character is highly influenced by forces outside awareness and is much more variable than we tend to think. Recognizing how those forces actually operate guides his efforts to work with public and private sector partners to design scalable nudges to enhance well-being.
