Michael Slepian
- Associate Professor of Business
- Management Division
- Areas of Expertise
- Decision Making & Negotiations, Leadership & Organizational Behavior
- Contact
- Office: 311 Kravis
- E-mail: [email protected]
Michael Slepian is the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Associate Professor of Leadership and Ethics in the Management Division of Columbia Business School. His program of research examines secrecy and trust. He studies the psychology of secrets and how keeping secrets affects two important variables that govern social and organizational life: trust and motivation. He has studied the consequences of keeping secrets, including how they change our behavior, judgments and actions. He studies the effects of both personal and professional secrets for the individual secret keeper as well as whether we can tell when others are concealing information from us.
- Education
-
B.A., Syracuse University; M.S. and Ph.D., Tufts University
- Joined CBS
- 2014
All Activities
Journal Article
.
“The Look of a Leader.”
(April 03, 2025).
Journal Article
.
“Secrets at Work.”
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
vol.
183
,
(July 01, 2024).
Journal Article
.
“The New Psychology of Secrecy.”
Sage Journals
(March 21, 2024).
Journal Article
Liu, Z. and
Michael Slepian
.
“Secrecy: Unshared Realities.”
Current Opinion in Psychology
vol.
23
,
(October 01, 2018):
124
-128
.
Journal Article
Slepian, Michael and K. Greenaway
.
“The benefits and burdens of keeping others' secrets.”
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
vol.
78
,
(September 01, 2018):
220
-232
.
Journal Article
.
“Future self-continuity is associated with improved health and increases exercise behavior.”
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied
vol.
24
,
(January 01, 2018):
72
-80
.
Journal Article
Slepian, Michael and J.N. Kirby
.
“To whom do we confide our secrets?”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
vol.
44
,
(January 01, 2018):
1008
-1023
.
Journal Article
.
“Perceiving groups: The people perception of diversity and hierarchy.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
vol.
114
,
(January 01, 2018):
766
-785
.
Journal Article
.
“The experience of secrecy.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
vol.
113
,
(January 01, 2017):
1
-33
.
Journal Article
.
“The unique contributions of perceiver and target characteristics in person perception.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
vol.
113
,
(January 01, 2017):
513
-529
.
Journal Article
.
“The experience of secrecy. .”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
vol.
113
,
(January 01, 2017):
1
-33
.
Journal Article
.
“Choosing Fusion: The Effects of Diversity Ideologies on Preference for Culturally Mixed Experiences.”
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
vol.
69
,
(January 01, 2017):
163
-171
.
Journal Article
.
“An approach-avoidance motivational model of trustworthiness judgments.”
Motivation Science
vol.
3
,
(January 01, 2017):
91
-97
.
Journal Article
Slepian, Michael and B. Bastian
.
“Truth or punishment: Secrecy and punishing the self.”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
vol.
43
,
(January 01, 2017):
1596
-1611
.
Journal Article
.
“The voiced pronunciation of initial phonemes predicts the gender of names.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
vol.
110
,
(April 01, 2016):
509
-527
.
Journal Article
.
“Internalized impressions: The link between apparent facial trustworthiness and deceptive behavior is mediated by targets' expectations of how they will be judged.”
Psychological Science
vol.
27
,
(February 01, 2016):
282
-288
.
Journal Article
.
“The hidden effects of recalling secrets: Assimilation, contrast, and the burdens of secrecy.”
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
vol.
145
,
(January 01, 2016):
27
-48
.
Journal Article
.
“Exposure to variability in facial emotion influences beliefs about the stability of psychological characteristics .”
Emotion
vol.
16
,
(January 01, 2016):
957
-964
.
Journal Article
.
“Social belonging motivates categorization of racially ambiguous faces.”
Social Cognition
vol.
34
,
(January 01, 2016):
97
-118
.
Journal Article
.
“Sensitivity to perceived facial trustworthiness is increased by activating self-protection motives.”
Social Psychological and Personality Science
vol.
6
,
(August 01, 2015):
607
-613
.
Journal Article
.
“The cognitive consequences of formal clothing.”
Social Psychological and Personality Science
vol.
6
,
(May 01, 2015):
661
-668
.
Journal Article
.
“Exploring the secrecy burden: Secrets, preoccupation, and perceptual judgments.”
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
vol.
144
,
(April 01, 2015):
e31-e42
.
Journal Article
.
“Cognition from on high and down low: Verticality and construal level.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
vol.
108
,
(January 01, 2015):
1
-17
.
Journal Article
.
“Disentangling multimodal processes in social categorization.”
Cognition
vol.
136
,
(January 01, 2015):
396
-402
.
Journal Article
.
“Averted eye-gaze disrupts configural face encoding.”
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
vol.
53
,
(July 01, 2014):
94
-99
.
Journal Article
Slepian, Michael and N. Ambady
.
“Simulating sensorimotor metaphors: Novel metaphors influence sensory judgments.”
Cognition
vol.
130
,
(March 01, 2014):
309
-314
.
Journal Article
.
“Thin-slice judgments in the clinical context.”
Annual Review of Clinical Psychology
vol.
10
,
(March 01, 2014):
131
-153
.
Journal Article
.
“Suppressing thoughts of evaluation while being evaluated.”
Journal of Applied Social Psychology
vol.
44
,
(January 01, 2014):
31
-39
.
Journal Article
.
“Fluid movement and fluid social cognition: Bodily movement influences essentialist thought.”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
vol.
40
,
(January 01, 2014):
111
-120
.
Journal Article
.
“Relieving the burdens of secrecy: Revealing secrets influences judgments of hill slant and distance.”
Social Psychological and Personality Science
vol.
5
,
(January 01, 2014):
293
-300
.
Journal Article
.
“Nonverbal expressions of status and system legitimacy: An interactive influence on race bias.”
Psychological Science
vol.
24
,
(November 01, 2013):
2315
-2321
.
Journal Article
.
“Quality of professional players' poker hands is perceived accurately from arm motions.”
Psychological Science
vol.
24
,
(November 01, 2013):
2335
-2338
.
Journal Article
Rutchick, A.M. and
Michael Slepian
.
“Handling ibuprofen increases pain tolerance and decreases perceived pain intensity in a cold pressor test.”
PLoS ONE
vol.
8
,
(January 01, 2013):
e56175
.
Journal Article
.
“Proprioception and person perception: Politicians and professors.”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
vol.
38
,
(December 01, 2012):
1621
-1628
.
Journal Article
Slepian, Michael and N. Ambady
.
“Fluid movement and creativity.”
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
vol.
141
,
(November 01, 2012):
625
-629
.
Journal Article
.
“The physical burdens of secrecy.”
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
vol.
141
,
(November 01, 2012):
619
-624
.
Journal Article
.
“A memory advantage for untrustworthy faces.”
Cognition
vol.
125
,
(January 01, 2012):
207
-218
.
Journal Article
.
“Embodied impression formation: Social judgments and motor cues to approach and avoidance.”
Social Cognition
vol.
30
,
(January 01, 2012):
232
-240
.
Journal Article
.
“Gender moderates the relationship between emotion and perceived gaze.”
Emotion
vol.
11
,
(December 01, 2011):
1439
-1444
.
Journal Article
.
“Emotion contagion moderates the relationship between emotionally-negative families and abnormal eating behavior.”
International Journal of Eating Disorders
vol.
44
,
(December 01, 2011):
716
-720
.
Journal Article
.
“Mating interest improves women's accuracy in judging male sexual orientation.”
Psychological Science
vol.
22
,
(July 01, 2011):
881
-886
.
Journal Article
.
“Tough and tender: Embodied categorization of gender.”
Psychological Science
vol.
22
,
(January 01, 2011):
26
-28
.
Journal Article
.
“The pen is mightier than the word: Object priming of evaluative standards.”
European Journal of Social Psychology
vol.
40
,
(August 01, 2010):
704
-708
.
Journal Article
.
“Shedding light on insight: Priming bright ideas.”
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
vol.
46
,
(July 01, 2010):
696
-700
.
Journal Article
.
“Behavioral stability across time and situations: Nonverbal versus verbal consistency.”
Journal of Nonverbal Behavior
vol.
34
,
(January 01, 2010):
43
-56
.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“The voiced pronunciation of initial phonemes predicts the gender of names.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
.
Forthcoming.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
Martin, A.E. and
Michael Slepian
.
“Dehumanizing gender: The de-biasing effects of gendering human-abstracted entities.”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
.
Forthcoming.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“The solitude of secrecy: Thinking about secrets evokes motivational conflict and feelings of fatigue.”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
.
Forthcoming.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
Slepian, Michael and E. Moulton-Tetlock
.
“Confiding secrets and well-being.”
Social Psychological and Personality Science
.
Forthcoming.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“Born that way or became that way: Stigma toward congenital versus acquired disability.”
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations
.
Forthcoming.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“Shame, guilt, and secrets on the mind.”
Emotion
.
Forthcoming.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
Slepian, Michael and K. Greenaway
.
“The benefits and burdens of keeping others' secrets.”
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
.
Forthcoming.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
Slepian, Michael and Evan Carr
.
“Facial expressions of authenticity: Emotion variability increases judgments of trustworthiness and leadership.”
Cognition
.
Forthcoming.
Chapter
Martin, A.E. and
Michael Slepian
.
“The Big Two.”
In The Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences
,
edited by V. Zeigler-Hill & T. Shackelford
,
New York
:
Springer
,
Forthcoming.
Chapter
Masicampo, E.J. and
Michael Slepian
.
“Linking diverse resources for action control.”
In Self-Regulation and Ego Control
,
edited by Edward R. Hirt, Joshua Clarkson, and Lile Jia
,
San Diego
:
Elsevier
,
2016.
Course
B8510: Managerial Negotiations
Course
B9520: Special Topics in Organizational Behavior
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Article
The Look of a Leader: How Bias Guides Our Image of Leaders
Article
New Research Finds Keeping Work Secrets Helps Employees Find Meaning in Jobs But Raises Stress
Article
The Silent Strain: How Keeping Secrets Affects Emotional Well-Being
Article
Columbia Bizcast: Prof. Michael Slepian Reveals the Truth about Secrecy
Article
Game of Secrets
Article
Keeping Secrets Is Harmful to Your Health, According to New Research from Columbia Business School
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