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This research may offer investors a way to restore their lost confidence in the financial markets and the people who manage their money. During boom times, the research- ers write, it's harder for investors to distinguish managers who are skilled from those who are just lucky. "Recessions," they continue, "are times when differences in per- formance are magnified and skill is easier to detect." Their paper, "Attention Allocation over the Business Cycle," is available at ssrn.com/abstract=1411367. Containing Blame Epidemics Blame can spread as quickly as a viral contagion, according to two Cali- fornia researchers. Once the leaders of an organization begin to blame individuals publicly for a problem— whether or not they're actually responsible—that practice will start to spread, say Nathanael Fast, assistant professor of management and organization at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business in Los Angeles, and Larissa Tiedens, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Business School. "When we see others protecting their egos, we become defensive," says Fast. "We then try to protect our own self-image by blaming others for our mistakes." That impulse can lead to employees who are less innova- tive, less willing to take risks, and less likely to learn from their mistakes. In one experiment, Fast and Tiedens asked a group of partici- pants to read a newspaper article about California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who blamed spe- cial interest groups for the failure of a controversial 2005 special election that cost the state $250 million. They asked a second group to read an article in which the governor took full responsibility. The researchers found that those who read the first article BizEd MARCH/APRIL 2010 47 were more likely than those who read the second to blame oth- ers for their own mistakes, even though those mistakes were unre- lated to the article. In another experiment, the researchers gave participants the opportunity to affirm their self- worth. In that scenario, the tenden- cy to spread blame was eliminated.