Understanding how people judge organizations, especially after organizational wrongdoing, is a complex puzzle—but a consequential one. New research from the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business sheds light on the intriguing ways that people do so.

In the paper "Do Companies Think and Feel? Mind Perception of Organizations," published August 16 in Cognitive Science, Simone Tang, assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration, and her co-author explore how people attribute human qualities to organizations by attributing "minds" to organizations—and how that may influence their opinions after organizational wrongdoing.

Four distinct studies by Tang and coauthor Kurt Gray, professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, reveal new paths to comprehend how people understand these abstract entities.

Read the full story at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business news site, BusinessFeed.