My name is Kellie and I'm on a quest to understand greed - specifically when people knowingly harm others for their own benefit.

My fascination with greed started in 2008 when the financial crisis hit, and I suddenly realized I didn't know how to do my job. At the time, I led a team of writers at a global financial services firm where we focused on creating educational materials for investors. But when the market crashed, investors didn't want education; they wanted someone to understand their pain.

It’s easy to forget that the financial crisis reduced Americans’ life savings and their dignity. While financial markets plummeted, people struggled to make sense of complex financial terms like credit default swaps and mortgage-backed securities. This jargon made them feel powerless and confused during the biggest economic event of their lives. The language made it difficult for Americans to understand the evening news, and it made hard-working people feel like they’d been left behind.  

As communicators, my team and I wanted to connect meaningfully with customers. We developed new methods of aggregating customer insight that revealed the human side of the people who invested with us—illuminating their hopes and their fears. We discovered wide variations in financial knowledge among customers and created tools that ensured we would inform our investors without ever making them feel inadequate.

But all the while, a larger question loomed: how did this happen? How did Lehman Brothers, a 158-year-old firm, suddenly shutter its doors? And who was responsible?

Looking for clues

The truth of what led to the financial crisis started to become clear in 2009 with investigative books like Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big to Fail and Mike Lewis’ 2010 book: The Big Short. Later, in January of 2011, the U.S. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission published their report documenting extreme acts of greed and exposing a culture of deception among Wall Street bankers and traders.

The most telling part of this report was a 6-letter acronym: IBGYBG: “I'll be gone, you'll be gone.” These six letters meant ‘when everything falls apart, you and I will be gone.’ An email from a trader to a ratings analyst that ended in IBGYBG was a way of inducing unethical behavior. It was a form of pressure, pushing each person to think only of themselves.

The answer to the question I asked in October of 2008 finally came into view. How did millions of families suddenly find their retirement savings, college savings, and home values were worth a fraction of what they’d been? The answer was greed—systemic, culturally accepted greed marked by a clear willingness to harm others.

This culture that openly encouraged destructive greed intrigued me. I wondered if people could suspend their moral code in one domain of their life while still being good parents and spouses. I wondered about the role of overt nudges like IBGYBG in cultural assimilation. Does corruption spread from one person to another like an illness? And is anyone motivated to act ethically when the tools used to deceive others are too advanced for average people to spot?

A new framework: positive psychology

Years later, when I entered a master’s program at the University of Pennsylvania with an opportunity to conduct research, I knew exactly what I wanted to study: greed.

But there was a problem. My master’s program was in the field of applied positive psychology, which investigates human strengths and explores what goes right — even in difficult situations.

From a research perspective, this meant designing a study that looked for positive deviance, seeking out the less common — yet highly adaptive — behaviors of outliers.

For example, a positive deviance investigation of the financial crisis would involve looking not at people who committed fraud, but at those who stayed true to their values despite pressure all around them to cheat.

Accordingly, my master’s research thesis shifted to reflect these tenets. Instead of studying greed, I studied moral exemplars — those who stayed true to themselves in difficult situations. To participate in my study, each person needed to have risked their own career growth to do what they believed was right. Each exemplar had faced a situation that tested their values, and they had taken a risk to follow their conscience.

My aim was to discover something unique about moral exemplars that others could learn from. What did these remarkable people share that enabled them to navigate their careers with moral courage? I suspected it might be a centering routine such as meditation or religious ritual; or perhaps an artifact — something imbued with meaning — that sat prominently in their work area. Another possibility was that they had all experienced a life-changing event that broadened their perspective and deepened their empathy. Or perhaps the common thread traced back to their childhood—things their parents had done to shape their moral code.

Insights from exemplars

What I learned was not at all what I had suspected. How did the moral exemplars in my study maintain their values amid competing pressures? They relied on other people to mirror their own virtue. Most exemplars carefully chose the people they surrounded themselves with, believing these relationships were too important to be left to chance. One exemplar told me he taught his sons to ‘pick your friends like you pick your fruit.’

When facing difficult choices, these exemplars turned to their trusted relationships for clarity, validation, and the courage to act on their values despite external pressure. Many found this trusted relationship in a spouse or sibling, while others relied on close friends. Two exemplars referred to these key relationships as “reinforcing mechanisms,” stabilizing their sense of self regardless of outside circumstances. These relationships strengthened their confidence when choosing between conflicting priorities.

It was this notion of a reinforcing mechanism — along with research on the motivating power of relationships — that led me to write: “Merely thinking about another person and our desire for them to hold us in high regard can shape our behavior. Moreover, the risk of eroding that special relationship, through which we feel that we are our very best, constrains our behavior and limits the choices we believe are available to us in any given moment.”

Designing a new tool to enable flourishing

Later, I received a fellowship from the Center for Positive Leadership at the University of Louisville to develop a teaching tool that would help others build these special relationships in their lives. That tool — Anchor Relationships — serves adults at every life stage and even college students.

What this work reveals is that the right relationships can strengthen our resilience, self-efficacy, and our ability to uphold moral values throughout our lives. These same relationships also fuel our vitality and wellbeing. As Dr. Robert Waldinger, director of The Harvard Study of Adult Development explains, “People who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80. People with strong social support maintained stronger mental health as they aged. . .Good relationships don’t just protect our bodies; they protect our brains.”  

My fascination with greed has evolved into a fascination with relationships — the kind that help us become our better selves and enable true human flourishing.