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Building Better Business through Brain Science

Connecting Brain Science and Business to Build a Better Society

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We are a community of faculty, undergraduates, graduate and professional students, and staff interested in connecting brain science and business.

Bigger Brains are Smarter, but Not by Much

Using a large dataset and controlling for a variety of factors, including sex, age, height, socioeconomic status, and genetic ancestry, WiN faculty affiliates Gideon Nave (Marketing) and Joe Kable (Psychology) found that people with larger brains rated higher on measures of intelligence and educational attainment. But size explains only about 2 percent of the variation in cognitive performance.

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Evolutionary Minds: Michael Platt and the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative featured in Wharton Magazine

Professor Michael Platt and the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative are exploring evolutionary brain science and using high-tech tools to unlock the secrets of human psychology. What does any of that have to do with business? More than you’d guess.

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Diana Robertson Named One of Top 50 Undergraduate Business Professors

Poets & Quants named Diana Robertson, Samuel A. Blank Professor in Legal Studies in Wharton’s Department of Legal Studies & Business Ethics, and Wharton Neuroscience Initiative Faculty Affiliate, as one of the top 50 Undergraduate Business Professors for 2018. Among other projects, Robertson recently explored what happens to the brain when people encounter ethical issues. She and her collaborators scanned the brains of 57 Wharton MBA students, and found that brain structure looks different in students that are more advanced in their thinking about ethics compared to those that are less advanced.

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As a premier research business school, Wharton boasts an outstanding faculty, a thriving MBA program, a strong research PhD training program, and unequaled undergraduate program situated on a cohesive and compact campus in Philadelphia, a major east coast city that is riding a new wave of financial and cultural investment tied to the new urbanism movement. These assets are complemented by the University of Pennsylvania and all of its constituent Schools, including Arts & Sciences and the Perelman School of Medicine.