Two of my independent study students recently returned from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Annual Meeting in San Antonio where they presented our paper on anticipation and how it impacts the evaluation of outcomes. The study examined the benefits of planning ahead and how it can enhance your overall experiences which in itself is quite interesting. What’s more noteworthy (for the time being) is that both students are not psychology students. They’ve taken consumer behavior and they know that psychology influences consumer behavior but they initially treated psychology as a different field. In some schools, fields like psychology or economics exist in different universes than business, students are exposed to the linkages between them. We try our best not to exist in our silos but it’s hard not to when we’re preoccupied with the difficult task of publishing quality work in our field. However, when we diminish the interdisciplinary nature of our fields the students miss out on potential opportunities. For Kenny and Sara, did presenting a research study at a psychology conference make them better psychologists (not by much), but did it make them better versed in the integration of psychology and marketing, absolutely.
Category Archives: Research
Everybody always says you should live in the moment – but there is something to be said for anticipation.
People always say you should be in the moment but if you do that you may not enjoy things as much as you would if you had planned ahead of time. Research by myself and two of my students (Sara Armor and Kenny Vukmanic) found that students who had firms plans weeks before spring break enjoyed spring break more than those who were spontaneous. Why is this? When we plan ahead we create this sense of anticipation which is a positive feeling, then when the event is over, even if it wasn’t ideal the person still benefited from this sense of anticipation. Sara and Kenny are going to present their research at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) annual meeting, this Winter in San Antonio. For a preview of the work I’ve attached the poster here. spsp-poster-anticipation-october-2016.
Football Recruiting – A national championship caliber team may not be a good fit for recruits
Football recruits dream of going to schools such as Alabama, Florida, and Notre Dame. For some, this represents the pinnacle of achievement, if you haven’t seen the eye opening series “Last Chance U” on Netflix then I highly recommend it as a good window into what people will do to get into the big schools. This semester, my independent study students and I will be examining high school recruits and studying the impact that their choice of school had on their professional football aspirations. Is it better for a 3 star recruit to attend Alabama where they get national attention but likely do not play until their senior year. Or should they attend a school such as the University of Alabama Birmingham where they can start in their second or third year. My students and I will be exploring this question, if you have any access to information that would help us to examine this issue please send it our way.
When a positive country of origin is a bad thing
Cars from Germany, Wine from Paris, hockey players from Canada, we have positive expectations of certain products from particular countries. However, what happens when those expectations are violated? For example, do we expect France to produce discount wines? Not really but the do, they actually produce all kinds of wines. However, when those expectations are violated we may draw negative inferences about the product. Negative as in, it’s a fake! I conducted a couple of studies over the past few years to find out what happens when people encounter low cost goods from countries that they think very positively about. The results show a positive country of origin can be a bad t hing..
Are our Facebook posts just ads in disguise?
You’re shopping and see a great deal so you Tweet it out to your friends. Or after you bought something new online your purchase is then “shared” on Facebook. When you post something you purchased, is that really just a social media post or is it an advertisement? The only thing that separates it from a traditional advertisement is that nobody paid you to advertise for them. It’s becoming more common for consumers to share this “pro bono” form of advertising but what happens to consumers when they see things that you’ve posted? Two of my independent study students and I just studied this and found that online retailers get a boost when purchases are posted online. The paper was presented a few months ago at the Big Data Analytics Conference at NYU Stern. A copy of the presentation can be found here.
