Behavioral Lab

Omair is a third-year behavioral marketing Ph.D. student at the Graduate School of Business. He holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in speech communication from the University of Illinois, and a M.A. degree in political science from Stanford University. Broadly, his research focuses on persuasion & attitude change, and consumer judgment & decision-making. Currently, he is working on projects that explore ironic effects in persuasion, such as the use of negative information about a product to increase purchase likelihood, or the use of weak arguments to increase advocacy for a cause.

Jayson has a BA in economics from Yale University and is currently a PhD student in Behavioral Marketing at the GSB.  At Yale, he was affiliated with the SOM Consumer Behavior Lab and the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.  His undergraduate research focused on perceived risk and overeating, and decision making under constraints.  Now, his broad areas of interest include consumer behavior, perceived risk, uncertainty, preference construction, and the self.

I'm looking at motivated evaluation and decision making; in particular, cases where people feel driven to choose and to do things that don't make them happy (or are bad in other ways). The main thrust involves fleshing out fundamental conceptual and construct distinctions between components of value related to desire (e.g., wanting, motivation, salience, strength of pursuit engagement) and experiential pleasure (e.g., liking, satisfaction, commitment, guilt/regret). I joined Stanford's Marketing PhD program in 2007, after completing undergraduate work in mathematics and computer science at the University of Waterloo (Canada). I spent two years there doing research in theoretical neuroscience, philosophy of mind, emotion, and other things.

Publications

• Litt, A., Eliasmith, C., Kroon, F. W., Weinstein, S. & Thagard, P. (2006). Is the brain a quantum computer? Cognitive Science, 30(3), 593-603.
• Litt, A., Eliasmith, C., & Thagard, P. (2006). Why losses loom larger than gains: Modeling neural mechanisms of cognitive-affective interaction.
• Thagard, P. & Litt, A. (2008). Models of scientific explanation. Chapter 20 in R. Sun (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Computational Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Litt, A., Eliasmith, C. & Thagard, P. (2008). Neural affective decision theory: choices, brains, and emotions. Cognitive Systems Research, 9(4), 252-273.
• Litt, A. & Shiv, B. (2009). Mental Health Hazards when the Brain is "Of Two Minds". Mental Notes, 2 (Spring 2009), 11-13. [physician-oriented magazine, peer-reviewed]
• Litt, A., Khan, U., & Shiv, B. (in press). Lusting while loathing: parallel counter-driving of wanting and liking. Psychological Science.
• Litt, A., Plassmann, H., Shiv, B., & Rangel, A. (2009). Dissociating valuation from motivational, attentional, and arousal signals during decision-making. Under review.

Current Projects

• Backfire effects of persuasive messages (with Z. Tormala)
• How people generalize their preference similarity with others (with U. Khan and Itamar Simonson)How frustrating failure can make people want something even more, but also like it less if they get it (with Baba Shiv and Uzma Khan)
• The fragility of motivated rationalization after difficult decisions (with Zak Tormala)
• Neural dissociation of valuation and preference strength/extremity at the time of decision making (with Hilke Plassmann, INSEAD; Antonio Rangel, Caltech; and B. Shiv)
• Effectiveness versus popularity of different "consumer coping" strategies (with U. Khan)
• Neuroscience and addictive consumption (with Dante Pirouz, UCI; and B. Shiv); Marketing and decision neuroscience (with Sam McClure, Stanford, and B. Shiv

Taly is a first-year behavioral marketing PhD student at the Graduate School of Business. She has an M.Sc. in Industrial Psychology from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, where her research focused on the conflicting effects of certainty on risk-taking behavior. She obtained a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Haifa, graduating with the highest honors. She also has industry experience in employee selection and marketing. Her research interests include consumer decision making, specifically the interplay between intuitive processes and cognitive processes and the irrational factors that influence decision-making.

Publications

• Sharoni Shafir, Taly Reich, Erez Tsur, Ido Erev and Arnon Lotem (2008), “Perceptual accuracy and conflicting effects of certainty on risk-taking behavior”, Nature, 453 (June), 917-920

Mel Rudd is a first-year behavioral marketing student at the Graduate School of Business. Prior to arriving at Stanford, Mel earned her Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration/Marketing from the University of Washington (Seattle) in 2007. Her current research interests include the automatic processes that affect judgment and behavior (when and why individuals may be unconsciously influenced by situational factors) and how current choices are influenced by anticipated future choices or previous decisions.

Current Projects

• Decreasing subjective ambivalence by increasing objective ambivalence, and the information search processes undertaken by those experiencing univalent ambivalence.
• How the anticipation of goal failure/transgression influences current choices, and the types of transgressions that are most demotivating

Lucia is a third year doctoral student in Organizational Behavior. Her primary research stream examines the relationship between the body and power. This includes but is not limited to work on the embodiment of power, the use of nonverbal behavior to influence perceptions and conferral of power and the role of the body in cognitive constructs of power. Additionally, she studies identity and group membership's impact upon various aspects of interpersonal relations. She is particularly interested in identities that, when disclosed, lead to social exclusion or rejection. In some of her research she studies how these disfavored identities influence the negotiation context and negotiator outcomes.

Publications

• Flynn, F. J., Reagans, R. E., & Guillory, L. (2010). Do You Two Know Each Other? Transitivity, Homophily, and the Need for (Network) Closure. Journal of personality and social psychology, 99(5), 855–869.
• Huang, L., Galinsky, A. D., Gruenfeld, D. H., & Guillory, L. E. (2011). Powerful Postures Versus Powerful Roles. Psychological Science, 22(1), 95.

Current projects

• Guillory, L. & Gruenfeld D. (under review). Direct and Downward Eye Gaze Activate Behavioral Approach and Sense of Power.
• Guillory, L. & Gruenfeld D. (in progress). Roles and Nonverbal Behavior as Indicators of Power & Status.
• Guillory, L. & Lowery B. (in progress) Dominant Group Identification and In-group Rejection.

I was born in San Diego, grew up in Colorado, and majored in Psychology as an undergraduate at Stanford. I have long been interested in conflict resolution, and like to apply the theories and research of Social Psychology to look at a broad array of disputes (international and political, legal, and organizational). I have more recently begun working with Benoit Monin and Liz Mullen on psychological questions related to morality and justice.

Current Projects

• The derogation of moral rebels
• Using the 'Decoy' Effect to influence options in a negotiation
• Exploring the possibility of vicarious moral credentials

Tamar Kreps

email: kreps_tamar "at" gsb.stanford.edu

I am a doctoral student in Organizational Behavior with a BA in Psychology from Stanford. My research investigates lay conceptions of the moral domain, as well as the effects of both experiencing and expressing moral conviction on interpersonal judgment, persuasion, and behavior. My current faculty collaborators include Benoît Monin, Elizabeth Mullen, Dale Miller, Nir Halevy, Zakary Tormala, and Mark Kelman (Law School).