Faculty Research - Marketing Research Publications

Buying (Quality) Time Predicts Relationship Satisfaction
Journal of Personality & Social Pyschology
Joe Gladstone
Additional authors: Ashley Whillans, Jessica Pow
Nov. 2025, Vol. 128 Issue 4, p821-863

Abstract: Seven studies examine the association between time-saving purchases (e.g., housecleaning and meal delivery services) and relationship satisfaction. Study 1 uses an 11-year longitudinal panel survey to show that increases in time-saving purchases predict long-term increases in relationship satisfaction. Study 2 replicates these findings with a 6-week daily diary study, demonstrating that time-saving purchases predict daily increases in relationship satisfaction, particularly for members of dual-income couples who are experiencing higher levels of stress. Studies 3 through 4b reveal that time-saving purchases are most beneficial when couples translate this influx of temporal resources into quality time spent together. Study 5 identifies two key aspects of quality time—positive mood when together and perceived support—that uniquely predict relationship satisfaction. Study 6, a preregistered study, provides evidence for our conceptual model: Members of committed relationships who make time-saving purchases more effectively manage daily stressors (i.e., household chores) and spend more quality time together, which predicts increased relationship satisfaction. Once again, these benefits are strongest for individuals experiencing higher levels of stress. These findings develop a nuanced framework connecting time-saving purchases to relationship satisfaction.

A timeline of cognitive costs in decision-making
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Nicholas Reinholtz
Additional authors: Christin Schulze, Ada Aka, Daniel M. Bartels, Stefan F. Bucher, Jake R. Embrey, Todd M. Gureckis, Gerald Haubl, Mark K. Ho, Ian Krajbich, Alexander K. Moore, Gabriele Oettingen, Joan D.K. Ongchoco, Ryan Oprea, Ben R. Newell
Sep. 2025, Vol. 29 Issue 9, p827-839

Abstract: Understanding cognitive costs is crucial for discerning how people trade off between the quality of their decisions and the cognitive costs associated with making them. There is striking heterogeneity across disciplines in how cognitive costs are conceptualized, measured, and assumed to influence behavior. Synthesizing research on cognitive costs across disciplines, we propose a timeline of cognitive costs that provides a framework for understanding when costs occur in the decision-making process, when they impact decisions, and when to intervene to improve people's decisions. Recent research from economics, psychology, cognitive science, computer science, and marketing is increasingly interested in the idea that people face cognitive costs when making decisions. Reviewing and synthesizing this research, we develop a framework of cognitive costs that organizes concepts along a temporal dimension and maps out when costs occur in the decision-making process and how they impact decisions. Our unifying framework broadens the scope of research on cognitive costs to a wider timeline of cognitive processing. We identify implications and recommendations emerging from our framework for intervening on behavior to tackle some of the most pressing issues of our day, from improving health and saving decisions to mitigating the consequences of climate change.

People overshoot when choosing resource pools
Journal of Experimental Social Pyschology
Ying Zeng
Additional authors: Christopher K. Hsee, Xilin Li
Sep. 2025, Vol. 129

Abstract: This paper studies a pool-choice dilemma, in which two or more resource-seekers decide independently whether to seek resources from a larger pool or a smaller pool. This dilemma mimics many real-life problems, such as firms or vendors deciding whether to enter a market with more potential buyers or one with fewer potential buyers. Across ten studies (five are incentive-compatible), we document a systematic overshooting bias , whereby the resource-seekers in the pool-choice dilemma are more likely to choose the large pool than normatively warranted, thereby sacrificing their own earnings. This research is a major extension of the prior work by Hsee et al. (2021) who found an opposite, undershooting effect in a similar dilemma. The current work offers a new look at the dilemma, with a more comprehensive theory that not only explains the overshooting effect found in this research, but also identifies its moderators and reconciles the opposite findings between this and the prior work. Contrary to what the prior work found, we predict and find that people in the dilemma generally overshoot rather than undershoot, unless they are explicitly prompted to predict the choice of their counterparts or the dilemma is framed in such a way that naturally prompts the players to consider the choice of their counterparts. This research carries theoretical implications for strategic thinking, and practical implications for resource competition.

More Done, More Drained: Being Further Along in a Mundane Experience Feels Worse
Journal of Personality & Social Pyschology
Ying Zeng
Additional authors: Claire Tsai Jan, Min Zhao, Nicole Robitaille
Aug. 2025, Vol. 129 Issue 2, p244-265

Abstract: Life is full of mundane tasks such as commuting, attending meetings, and filing paperwork. Despite their ubiquity, experience with mundane tasks remains understudied in the literature. Across a series of lab and field studies, we show that the negative feelings about a mundane experience are impacted by people's perception of how much of the task has been completed, which we term relative task completion. Contrary to people's intuition, we find that the same ongoing task (e.g., sitting through a boring meeting for 20 min) feels less aversive when relative completion is lower (e.g., in a 60-min meeting) than when it is higher (e.g., in a 30-min meeting). Our studies suggest this may occur due to ratio sensitivity: People infer that they have endured less after completing a smaller, rather than a larger, proportion of a mundane task, which reduces negative feelings. Data also showed that people lack insight into the impact of relative task completion and ruled out alternative explanations including response scale anchoring, progress focus, and preparation while suggesting mood regulation and attention as parallel explanations in some contexts. Finally, we identify busyness as a moderator and develop three low-cost interventions to manipulate perceived relative task completion and improve mundane experiences. Statement of Limitations: Our research examined how relative completion affects mundane experiences, across a wide variety of tasks in lab and field settings. Our studies mainly measured self-reported experiences though also included unrelated incentive-compatible decisions in Study 2 and behavioral tendencies in Study 4. In four studies, we provided preliminary evidence for the proposed underlying mechanism—ratio thinking; this mechanism is worth further investigation using additional behavioral measures in field settings. Our core effect on mundane experiences had reasonable statistical power and should be reproducible across equivalent samples and tasks in the near future. Other demographic groups may not exhibit the same effects of relative completion due to differences in what they consider mundane tasks, their coping strategies, or their busyness level. Evolving social conditions might also lead to differences in the long run. In addition, we expect a weaker or even null effect for positive experiences if hedonic adaptation dominates, and when the length of a task is highly evaluable (e.g., the amount of sleep) according to our Supplemental Studies and the proposed ratio sensitivity mechanism, respectively. Moreover, our theory does not apply to contexts where relative completion information is hard to acquire (e.g., without a clear total task length due to an evolving or undefined endpoint) or when the experience involves high stakes or is overwhelming from beginning to end (no variance throughout the negative episode; e.g., childbirth). These possible boundary conditions are beyond the scope of the current research but deserve future research attention.

Quality–Quantity Tradeoffs in Consumption
Journal of Consumer Research
Rodrigo S. Dias
Additional authors: Eesha Sharma, Gavan J. Fitzsimons
Jun. 2025, Vol. 52 Issue 1, p93-114

Abstract: Tradeoffs between quality and quantity are widespread in consumer decision- making. While existing research has focused on situational and contextual factors driving choices of higher-quality or higher-quantity purchases, in the current work, we find that consumers possess generalized preferences for quality or quantity across purchase categories. Some consumers systematically prefer quality over quantity, and others systematically prefer quantity over quality. In 32 studies (N ¼ 24,404) that use correlational, experimental, and longitudinal designs, and proprietary data from the Federal Reserve Bank, the current research introduces quality–quantity preferences as a novel facet of consumer decision-making. Studies 1–3 demonstrate quality–quantity preferences as an individual difference, develop the “quality-quantity tradeoffs” scale to measure it, and demonstrate that it is different from related existing constructs. Studies 4A–5 show that consumers who prefer quantity over quality spend more money, borrow more, and accrue more debt, indicating that quality–quantity preferences are consequential. Taken together, our findings underscore the importance of quality–quantity preferences as a driver of consumer behavior and pave the way for future research investigating the causes and consequences of consumers’ dispositions toward quality or quantity.

Childhood Poverty and Its Impact on Financial Decision Making Under Threat: A Preregistered Replication of Griskevicius et al. (2011b).
Journal of Experimental Psychology
Joe Gladstone, Mallory Decker, Meredith Lehman
Jun. 2025, Vol. 31 Issue 2, p139-151

Abstract: We investigated the influence of childhood poverty on financial decision making under threat by replicating the findings of Griskevicius et al. (2011b), which found that individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds tend to make riskier financial decisions and prefer immediate over delayed gratification when exposed to mortality cues. Following an extension of life history theory to individual behaviors, the original research argued that these behaviors reflect a faster and riskier strategy to cope with survival threats. In a preregistered replication using the same procedures and instruments as the original study, we tested this hypothesis with a sample size 14.2 times larger than the original (1,010 vs. 71). We replicated the effect of mortality salience on risk-taking for people who experienced childhood poverty but with a substantially smaller effect size (η2 = 0.004 vs. η2 = 0.17 in the original). We failed to find any effect on time preferences in contrast to the original study's medium effect size (η2 = 0.046). Although our findings partially support the results of Griskevicius et al. (2011b) on poverty and financial decision making, the drastically reduced effect sizes challenge the practical significance of these findings. Our replication results underscore the importance of large sample studies in understanding the effects of childhood socioeconomic status on future life decisions. They also suggest that frameworks beyond life history theory may be needed to reliably capture such relationships. Public Significance Statement: This study attempted to replicate influential research linking childhood poverty to riskier financial decision making under mortality threat. Using a large, diverse sample, we found limited support for this hypothesis, with a significant but very small effect on risk-taking and no effect on temporal discounting. These findings challenge the original study's conclusions and their real-world relevance. Our work underscores the need for well-powered replications to test the reliability of findings on poverty and decision making. More broadly, it suggests that the application of evolutionary frameworks such as life history theory to individual human behaviors requires careful validation. Understanding how early life conditions shape adult choices remains an important goal, but overgeneralizing from single studies can lead us astray. Cumulative evidence from robust, multimethod research is essential to inform effective interventions and policies that improve decision making and well-being for individuals from all backgrounds.

How Second Screens Shape Consumer Experiences: The Role of Social Connection on Repeat Viewing
Psychology & Marketing
Will Wei Wu, Alixandra Barasch
Additional author: Emily R. Powell
May 2025, Vol. 42 Issue 5, p1249-1263

Abstract: The use of additional electronic devices, such as smartphones or tablets, for sharing, reviewing, and communicating online has become an integral part of consumers' media consumption experiences. Previous research has demonstrated that using connected devices during consumption experiences mainly serves to decrease the utility consumers derive from their experiences. In contrast, the present research examines when second screen use might have a positive effect on the media consumption experience. Across three studies using a variety of real‐world media consumption experiences, we demonstrate that second screen use enhances consumers' feelings of social connection, which in turn increases their likelihood of repeating the media consumption experience. We also identify the viewing context as a theory‐driven and practically‐relevant moderator: second screen use enhances feelings of social connection and repeat viewing when viewers are watching alone, but this effect reverses when viewers are watching with others. These findings have clear substantive implications for a variety of industry stakeholders, including broadcasters, content creators, and platform developers who wish to capture greater consumer attention and foster long‐term viewer loyalty.

Comments on “AI and the advent of the cyborg behavioral scientist”
Journal of Consumer Psychology
Peter McGraw
Additional authors: Paul Andrew Blythe, Christopher Kulis, Michael Haenlein, Kelly Hewett, Kiwoong Yoo, Stacy Wood, Vicki G. Morwitz, Joel Huber
Apr. 2025, Vol 35 Issue 2, p316-328

Abstact: Below are comments on Tomaino, Cooke, and Hoover by four teams of collaborative reviewers that helped clarify and focus its original version. Their comments on the refined version articulate how the fast‐moving world of generative AI can alter authors, readers, reviewers, and consumer behavior journals. In the first comment, Blythe, Kulis, and McGraw propose that Generative AI requires substantial effort to generate research that is fast, cost‐effective, and of high quality. They articulate three recommendations: to ask, to train, and to check the system. Asking builds on GenAI's ability to reveal its own capabilities at different stages of the research process. Training allows the system to be customized with relevant context, domain‐specific documents, and tailored examples, enhancing its accuracy and reducing errors. Checking is strongly advised to validate that the outputs are both reasonable and robust. Haenlein, Hewett, and Yoo build on the capabilities of Large Language Models that go beyond the research practices central to consumer psychology. They outline strategic prompting strategies: starting broadly and gradually narrowing to specific domains, downloading information from relevant articles and data that is unlikely to be part of the current corpus, and evoking specific theories, methods, or presentation formats. They also elaborate on the ways the apparent magic of GenAI may raise learning or ethical challenges. The third comment by Stacy Wood focuses less on the capabilities of GenAI and more on how its adoption will depend on researcher feelings—in other words, how different aspects of its use may alter researchers' experiences of doing research and their identities as scholars. GenAI has the potential to both build (through increased productivity or increased accessibility) and limit (through loss of agency or faster production) pride of purpose in research. She argues that feelings from using GenAI are likely to differ across research steps, from developing novel concepts, processes, analyses, and writing of the paper. Wherever GenAI may lessen the excitement, satisfaction, motivation, and perceived status of the researcher, barriers to its use are likely to be erected. Finally, Vicki Morwitz identifies new AI capabilities beyond those explored in Tomaino et al. Those include the ability to generate synthetic data that can guide empirical experiments, a facility to create audio and visual stimuli, a capability to study group behavior, and a capacity to reliably interpret complex human statements. The comment then closes with important questions for editorial policies, raising issues about limitations on AI use by authors, its appropriate applications by review teams, and possible publishers' restrictions on uploading copyrighted articles.

The motivating power of streaks: Increasing persistence is as easy as 1, 2, 3
Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes
Alixandra Barasch
Additional authors: Katie Mehr, Jackie Silverman, Marissa A. Sharif, Katherine L. Milkman
Mar. 2025, Vol. 187

Abstract: Organizations often use financial incentives to boost employees’ commitment to work-relevant goals in an effort to increase persistence and goal achievement (e.g., to improve organizational efficiency or sales). We introduce and test a novel incentive scheme designed to enhance persistence by increasing commitment to the goal of maximizing earnings. Specifically, we test “streak incentives,” or rewards that offer people increasing payouts for completing multiple consecutive work tasks. Across six pre-registered studies (total N = 4,493), we show that, contrary to standard economic models suggesting people will complete more piece-rate work for larger rewards, people actually complete more work when compensated with streak incentives than with larger, stable incentives. We theorize that this occurs because, by encouraging consecutive task completion, streak incentives increase commitment to a goal of maximizing earnings, which in turn increases persistence. We also show that this effect is not driven by providing increasing rewards; rather, people’s goal commitment and motivation are boosted by the requirement that they complete work tasks consecutively to earn escalating payments. Taken together, our results suggest that designing incentives to encourage streaks of work is a low-cost way to increase goal commitment and therefore persistence in organizations and other contexts.

A Glass Half Full of Money: Dispositional Optimism and Wealth Accumulation Across the Income Spectrum
Journal of Personality & Social Pyschology
Joe Gladstone
Additional author: Justin Pomerance
Jan. 2025, Vol. 128 Issue 1, p147-195

Abstract: What drives some people to save more effectively for their future than others? This multistudy investigation (N = 143,461) explores how dispositional optimism—the generalized tendency to hold positive expectations about the future—shapes individuals' financial decisions and outcomes. Leveraging both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs across several countries, our findings reveal that optimism significantly predicts greater savings over time, even when controlling for various demographic, psychological, and financial covariates. Furthermore, we find that the role of optimism varies based on socioeconomic circumstances: Among lower income individuals, optimism is more strongly associated with saving. This suggests optimism may be particularly beneficial for the financial well-being of economically disadvantaged populations. To ensure the robustness of our conclusions, we employ diverse methodological approaches, including cross-sectional and longitudinal data sets, objective measures of saving behavior to reduce self-report bias, and within-person analyses to control for stable individual differences. These findings suggest that interventions and policies aimed at fostering optimism may be an effective approach to promoting savings and building financial resilience, especially among economically vulnerable populations. More broadly, our work underscores the value of integrating psychological factors into economic models of saving behavior to develop a more comprehensive understanding of how people make financial decisions in the real world.

Pre-Registered Interim Analysis Designs (PRIADs): Increasing the Cost-Effectiveness of Hypothesis Testing
Journal of Consumer Research
Nicholas Reinholtz, Quentin André
Dec. 2024, Vol. 51 Issue 4, p845-865.

Abstract: The difficulty of determining how many observations to collect is a source of inefficiency in consumer behavior research. Group sequential designs, which allow researchers to perform interim analyses while data collection is ongoing, could offer a remedy. However, they are scarcely used in consumer behavior research, probably owing to low awareness, perceived complexity, or concerns about the validity of this approach. This article offers a tutorial on group sequential designs and introduces Pre-Registered Interim Analysis Designs (PRIADs): A practical five-step procedure to facilitate the adoption of these designs in marketing. We show that group sequential designs can be easily adopted by marketing researchers, and introduce a companion app to help researchers implement them. We demonstrate multiple benefits of PRIADs for researchers engaged in confirmatory hypothesis testing: They facilitate sample size decisions, allow researchers to achieve a desired level of statistical power with a smaller number of observations, and help conduct more efficient pilot studies. We validate this cost-saving potential through a comprehensive re-analysis of 212 studies published in the Journal of Consumer Research , which shows that using PRIADs would have reduced participant costs by 20–29%. We conclude with a discussion of limitations and possible alternatives to PRIADs.

Keep It Simple? Consumer Perceptions of Brand Simplicity and Risk
Journal of Marketing Research
Philip Fernbach
Additonal author: Nicholas Light
Dec. 2024, Vol. 61 Issue 6, p1152-1170.

Abstract: Evoking simplicity in marketing communications has become popular among marketing practitioners, but little is known about its effects on consumers and firms. The current work focuses on consumers' perceptions of the simplicity or complexity of brands and a previously overlooked consequence of those perceptions. Results from six experiments and analysis of a proprietary customer satisfaction dataset from Consumer Reports (N = 147,600) show that when consumers think brands are simple, they judge them to be less likely to experience product or service failures. Although these lower risk judgments could be positive for brands, they can also lead consumers to punish simpler brands more in the event of failures. Results also suggest that consumers' simplicity/complexity perceptions reflect the dimensionality of their mental representations of brands, and the relationship between simplicity and lower risk is attenuated when additional brand dimensionality is framed in terms of redundancy. The findings cast doubt on the degree to which evoking simplicity is a uniformly positive marketing strategy and encourage practitioners to more thoughtfully consider simplicity's implications for consumer and firm welfare.

Consumers' minimum time investments in meaningful consumption
Marketing Letters
Lawrence Williams
Additional author: Erin Percival Carter, Nicholas Light
Dec. 2024, Vol. 35 Issue 4, p561-573.

Abstract: Consumer well-being involves not only the pursuit of pleasure, but also the pursuit of meaning. However, little is known about how people perceive the costs and benefits of meaning- versus pleasure-oriented experiences. We find that compared to pleasure-oriented experiences, people expect meaning-oriented experiences to be more satisfying after meeting a minimum time investment (i.e., the perceived minimum amount of time needed to derive benefits from consumption; study 1). As a consequence, people choose to prolong their exposure to meaningful (vs. pleasurable) experiences following interruptions (study 2). We discuss the implications of minimum time investments for firms' relationships with consumers and marketing communication design.

Probabilistic Outcomes Are Valued Less in Expectation, Even Conditional on Their Realization
Management Science
Quentin André
Additional author: Gabriele Paolacci
Nov. 2024, Vol. 70 Issue 11, p7524-7536.

Abstract: Most theories of decision making under risk assume that payoffs and probabilities are separable. In the context of a lottery, the subjective value of a prospective outcome (the payoff) is assumed to be independent of the likelihood that the outcome will occur (the probability). In violation of this assumption, we present eight experiments showing that people anticipate less utility from uncertain outcomes than from certain outcomes, even conditional on their realization. The devaluation of uncertain outcomes is observed across different measures of utility (willingness to spend money or time; choice between different options), different populations (student and online samples), and different manipulations of uncertainty. We show that this result does not simply reflect a misunderstanding of the instructions or people's aversion toward a "weird" transaction with unexplained features. We highlight the implications of this phenomenon for empirical investigations of risk preferences and conclude with a discussion of the psychological mechanisms that might drive the devaluation of probabilistic outcomes.

Financial Education Effects on Financial Behavior and Well-Being: The Mediating Roles of Improved Objective and Subjective Financial Knowledge and Parallels in Physical Health
Journal of Public Policy & Marketing
John Lynch, Donald Lichtenstein, David Dobolyi
Additional author: Richard G. Netemeyer,
Oct. 2024, Vol. 43 Issue 4, p254-275.

Abstract: How does financial education lead to improved financial behavior and higher financial well-being? An influential Consumer Financial Protection Bureau model introduced in 2015 proposes that the goal of financial education is to improve financial well-being and that financial education does so by increasing financial knowledge, which improves financial behavior, which improves financial well-being. In this study, the authors test links in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau model, examining the differential roles of objective and subjective knowledge. They also test whether an analogous model might capture effects of physical health education on physical health knowledge, behavior, and well-being. They report a quasi-experiment comparing changes in financial and physical health knowledge, behavior, and well-being at two time points in a semester for students enrolled in a personal finance class, a personal health class, or neither. This study reports the first causal estimates of flow from financial education to financial knowledge to financial behaviors to a validated measure of subjective financial well-being. Financial education caused large changes in both objective and subjective knowledge. Yet only subjective knowledge mediated the large effects of financial education on changes in downstream behaviors. The authors find weaker but similar results for physical health. The findings suggest that financial education efforts should be refocused to foster subjective knowledge and improved behavior.

"Statistical Significance" and Statistical Reporting: Moving Beyond Binary
Journal of Marketing
John Lynch
Additional authors: Blakeley McShane, Eric T. Bradlow, Robert J. Meyer
May 2024, Vol. 88 Issue 3, p1-19.

Abstract: Null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) is the default approach to statistical analysis and reporting in marketing and the biomedical and social sciences more broadly. Despite its default role, NHST has long been criticized by both statisticians and applied researchers, including those within marketing. Therefore, the authors propose a major transition in statistical analysis and reporting. Specifically, they propose moving beyond binary: abandoning NHST as the default approach to statistical analysis and reporting. To facilitate this, they briefly review some of the principal problems associated with NHST. They next discuss some principles that they believe should underlie statistical analysis and reporting. They then use these principles to motivate some guidelines for statistical analysis and reporting. They next provide some examples that illustrate statistical analysis and reporting that adheres to their principles and guidelines. They conclude with a brief discussion.

Cut me some slack! How perceptions of financial slack influence pain of payment
Psychology & Marketing
Nicholas Reinholtz
Additional author: Justin Pomerance
May 2024, Vol. 41 Issue 5, p1100-1114.

Abstract: Consumers often experience pain of payment, a tug of negative affect that holds back their spending. While the literature has long viewed pain of payment as self‐regulatory in nature, it has left the dynamics of self‐regulation that lead to the pain of paying largely unaddressed. In self‐regulation, affect arises when people move away from a goal they hold. Thus, understanding the specific goals that people consider when making a payment can help us better predict when pain of payment will arise. We propose that people have a goal to maintain financial slack, and that violating this goal contributes to pain of payment. Thus, people experience more pain of payment when the goal to maintain financial slack is stronger or when it is particularly salient that a purchase entails losing financial slack. Critically, subjective changes in financial slack are not equivalent to objective changes in wealth, altering pain of payment for economically equivalent trades. This research contributes to the existing literature by identifying a novel antecedent to the pain of payment. It additionally expands our understanding of people's preferences between payment systems. Finally, it offers guidance to practitioners who wish to minimize pain of payment among their consumers.

Conspiracy Theory as Individual and Group Behavior: Observations from the Flat Earth International Conference
Topics in Cognitive Science
Philip Fernbach
Additional author: Jonathan E. Bogard
Apr. 2024, Vol. 16 Issue 2, p187-205.

Abstract: Conspiratorial thinking has been with humanity for a long time but has recently grown as a source of societal concern and as a subject of research in the cognitive and social sciences. We propose a three‐tiered framework for the study of conspiracy theories: (1) cognitive processes, (2) the individual, and (3) social processes and communities of knowledge. At the level of cognitive processes, we identify explanatory coherence and faulty belief updating as critical ideas. At the level of the community of knowledge, we explore how conspiracy communities facilitate false belief by promoting a contagious sense of understanding, and how community norms catalyze the biased assimilation of evidence. We review recent research on conspiracy theories and explain how conspiratorial thinking emerges from the interaction of individual and group processes. As a case study, we describe observations the first author made while attending the Flat Earth International Conference, a meeting of conspiracy theorists who believe the Earth is flat. Rather than treating conspiracy belief as pathological, we take the perspective that is an extreme outcome of common cognitive processes. We propose a three‐tiered framework for the study of conspiracy theories: (1) cognitive processes, (2) the individual, and (3) social processes and communities of knowledge. We review recent research on conspiracy theories and explain how conspiratorial thinking emerges from the interaction of individual and group processes. As a case study, we describe observations the first author made while attending the Flat Earth International Conference, a meeting of conspiracy theorists who believe the Earth is flat.

Lay economic reasoning: An integrative review and call to action
Consumer Psychology Review
Amit Bhattacharjee
Additional author: Jason Dana
Jan. 2024, Vol. 7 Issue 1, p3-39.

Abstract: Consumer psychology refers to how people think and act within an economic role in market exchange. However, we know little about how consumers actually perceive these roles, or how they understand markets and economic activity more broadly. That is, we lack an understanding of the economic reasoning of non‐expert consumers, how it departs from formal economic reasoning, and why. The current paper is intended to address this gap. We provide an integrative review of research on lay economic reasoning that consistently reveals how differently lay consumers and economists think about markets. We propose a unifying mental model to explain these divergences. Suggest why it is reinforced by what lay consumers observe (and do not observe) through firsthand marketplace experience, and note its potential evolutionary basis. We then highlight how understanding lay economic reasoning can not only help explain a wide array of marketplace phenomena, but also provide a novel lens to help advance, generate, and better integrate theory across many active literatures within consumer psychology. Without markets, there are no consumers and there is no marketing. We therefore call for consumer psychologists to take ownership of the study of lay economic reasoning and make markets more central to marketing scholarship.