Behavioral Lab

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.

Uma is a third year doctoral student in the marketing department. Based on her extensive background in the neurosciences, Uma is interested in many of the neuropsychological factors that underlie facets of decision making.  Her current projects examine the effects of context and framing on perceptions of value and subsequent choice. In addition, she is interested in the factors involved in choice satisfaction and post-choice regret.  Other research includes work on the interpersonal effects of expressed confidence on attitudes and behavior.

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

Broadly speaking, I am interested in the psychology of social justice. I study why some people violate social norms, and how they justify their behavior. I am also interested in how observers react to those norm violations (either by punishing the offender or compensating the victim). Some of my work looks at the antecedents of punishment and compensation, such as the emotions that the victim expresses, while other studies examine the consequences of decisions to punish and compensate, such as status conferral.

Publications

• Flynn, F.J., & Adams, G.S. (2009 in press). Money Can’t Buy Love: Asymmetric beliefs about gift price and feelings of appreciation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Current Projects

• Adams, G.S. & Mullen, E. (2009). Paying out and moving up: Compensating victims leads to more status conferral than punishing perpetrators. Working paper.
• Mullen, G.S., Zak, S.V., Chow, R.O., & Adams, G.S. (2009). Power influences preferences for retributive and compensatory justice. Working paper.
• Research with Dale Miller on exemptions from compliance with social norms. Research in progress

I am a first year doctoral student in Organizational Behavior. I’m interested in learning more about how group identity interacts with situational factors to influence the way that people think and act in the world. While I’m fascinated by the development and effect of stereotypes, I am also more broadly interested in interracial interactions, gender, power, conflict, and how these factors influence our conceptualization of inequality. Recently I have been involved in work on how race influences the social networks that people recollect and envision. I am also currently working on a project that attempts to examine the role of morality claims in perpetuating conflict. In the coming months I hope to further develop these research streams and discover more points of interest.

Current Projects

• Presumed Homophily
• Morality and the Perpetuation of Conflict

Publications

• Knowles, E. D., Lowery, B. S., Hogan, C. M., & Chow, R. M. (in press). On the malleability of ideology: Motivated construals of color-blindness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
• Jones, N. P., Papadakis, A. A. , Hogan, C. M., & Strauman, T. J. (in press). Over and over again: Rumination, reflection, and promotion goal failure and their interactive effects on depressive symptoms. Behaviour Research and Therapy.

Current projects

• Hogan, C. M., & Lowery, B. S. (in preparation). Appeasement: Keeping what you have by giving some away.
• Hogan, C. M., & Lowery, B. S. (in progress). The self-protective function of the myth of the model minority: Positively stereotyping asian americans protects whites’ self-esteem.
• Hogan, C. M., Tiedens, L. Z., & Chow, R. M. (in preparation). Gaining group entry: The value of submissive behavior in job interviews
• Flynn, F. J., & Hogan, C. M. (in preparation). Cooperation as a means of reducing conflict: Requesting versus offering help.

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

I was born in Russia and as a young teenager moved to California, the OC to be exact. From that point on, I was determined to get good grades in school so I could escape from the boredom and superficiality of American suburbia.  I finally found myself at UC Berkeley where I received a degree in Psychology and Business Administration. It was there where I truly fell in love with the scientific method, especially how it could be used to study people's behavior in groups.   I first thought I had to cross the continent to pursue this passion, but it turned out that all I had to do was go to the other side of the Bay! Oh, I almost forgot:  As a tribute to my immigration experience and entrepreneurial spirit, I am also one of two cofounders of IMTranslator (imtranslator.com), a sophisticated online application designed to assist people with their multilingual communication needs on the web.  Don't thihnk that  I am all work and no play.  I am very happily married to my husband, Ilya, and I love to cook!

Current Projects

I am currently working on my dissertation where I am exploring participation in online consumer review forums as a social phenomenon, governed by social norms and concerns.  In addition, with Prof. Miller, I study how norms govern who has standing to speak out against injustices.  With Prof. Flynn, I study how systems of generalized exchange evolve in the context of an online gifting community (i.e. Freecycle.org) and compare this unorthodox system to more common direct exchange system such as Craigslist.org. With Prof. Mullen, I study how power influences people's willingness to restore justice following a transgression.

Research Interests

My research focuses on three areas: 1) theories of bounded rationality—how cognitive constraints affect decision-making; 2) the political economy of development, specifically in the domains of gender and education; and 3) the role of social networks on decision making processes. Having been a public policy practitioner first, my research questions are always tied to a pressing social policy question. Given the complexities of public policy questions, my research style interdisciplinary, drawing on theories and methodologies in economics, education, political science, psychology, and sociology.

Current Projects

• Healy, Andrew, Malhotra, Neil, and Mo, Cecilia H. (2009).
• Euphoria and Retrospective Voting. Working Paper.
• Mo, Cecilia H. & Weiksner, G. Michael (2009). Gender Stereotypes, Candidate Quality, and Vote Choice: Results from Field and Lab Election Experiments. Working Paper. Funded by the Stanford Interdisciplinary Behavioral Research Fund.
• Nie, Norman, Grewal, Elena & Mo, Cecilia H. (2009). With a Little Help from my Friends’ Parents: Exploring Peer Effects and Educational Attainment. Working Paper. Funded by the Stanford Institute of Quantitative Study of Society.
• Mo, Cecilia H. (2009). Trafficking of Children in Nepal: Developing a Causal Model of Vulnerability.
• Margalit, Yoham, Malhotra, Neil, and Mo, Cecilia H. (2009). Attitudes of Americans on the Global Community in a Changing World.