Research & Areas of Expertise

Lindner's research faculty are world-renowned consumer psychologists who specialize in understanding why we do what we do. Since 2018, our faculty rank sixth in the world for articles published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

Read on below for our faculty's areas of expertise.

Headshot of Rashmi Adaval, PhD

Rashmi Adaval, PhD

Professor Adaval’s research is in the areas of imagery and visual perception, feelings and emotions, numerical cognition, and conscious and nonconscious processes in consumer information processing and decision making.

Headshot of Oriana Aragon, PhD

Oriana Aragon, PhD

Professor Aragon's research uses experimental psychology and neuroscience to study how emotion expressions and motivations affect consumer judgments and decision-making. Her work has been widely recognized in the popular press.

Headshot of Joshua Clarkson, PhD

Joshua Clarkson, PhD

Professor Clarkson’s areas of expertise include attitudes and persuasion, and motivation and self-control. He holds PhD degrees in both Marketing and Psychology.

Headshot of Kimberly Hyun, PhD

Kimberly Hyun, PhD

Professor Hyun's research considers how consumers’ perception of and relationships with technologies (e.g., personalized recommendations, artificially intelligent (AI) devices) influence persuasion and consumer well-being in the digital marketplace.

Headshot of Frank Kardes, PhD

Frank Kardes, PhD

One of the field’s most published researchers, Professor Kardes studies consumer persuasion, judgment, inference, and decision making

Headshot of James Kellaris, PhD

James Kellaris, PhD

Professor Kellaris is widely known for his research on the influence of music on consumers; he developed the “earworm” phenomenon. He examines ethical decision making, including cultural influences on ethical judgment and biases.

Headshot of Karen Machleit, PhD

Karen Machleit, PhD

Professor Machleit is best known for her research in retail atmospherics, including online atmospherics and crowding in the retail store. She has expertise in psychometrics and measurement.

Headshot of Susan Mantel, PhD

Susan Mantel, PhD

Human decision making in areas such as consumer behavior, sales, and business to business settings is the focus of Professor Mantel’s research.

Headshot of Noah Van Bergen, PhD

Noah Van Bergen, PhD

Professor Van Bergen’s research fits into two areas: how implicitly held beliefs influence consumer behavior' and how different display formats and numerical processing influence product perceptions.

Headshot of Robert Wyer, PhD

Robert Wyer, PhD

One of the most published consumer psychologists in the world, Professor Wyer’s research spans a wide variety of topics such as consumer information processing, judgment and decision making, and attitudes/persuasion.

Headshot of Alberto Barchetti

Alberto Barchetti

Alberto researches information processing, political ideology and persuasion. His interests center largely on the process of consumption, with particular interest in the appeal of discomforting or aversive experiences.

Headshot of Hyerin Han

Hyerin Han

Hyerin’s research is in the areas of political psychology and social influence.

Headshot of Yujin Lee

Yujin Lee

Yujin's research includes two areas: how product aesthetics shape different processes of inference-making and how ideological differences drive the preference between material and experiential consumption.

Headshot of Eda Ozturk

Eda Ozturk

Eda studies consumer emotions and feelings, such as regret and disappointment, judgment and decision-making, luxury consumption patterns, and celebrity endorsements.

Headshot of Kristian Park

Kristian Park

Kristian’s research aims to understand how different cognitive processes affect consumer attitudes, judgements and mindsets, as well as different strategies that may change as consumer’s cognitive processing.

Headshot of Liang Shen

Liang Shen

Liang explores the influence of different information modalities on the potential to promote sustainable behaviors and biodiversity conservation. She also investigates how consumers response to different types of threats.

Headshot of Emma Sittenauer

Emma Sittenauer

Emma’s research centers around consumer perceptions in the areas of personal identity, impression formation, communication norms and the effects of digital media.

Fall 2023

  • Joshua Clarkson, PhD, Arthur Beerman Professor of Marketing, explored how consumers seek out different experiences to learn about themselves and the world depending on their mindset in the article “Motivated Knowledge Acquisition: Implicit Self-Theories and the Preference for Knowledge Breadth or Depth” in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
  • Sue Mantel, PhD, professor of marketing, and James Kellaris, PhD, James S. Womack / Gemini Chair of Signage and Visual Marketing published an article, “Bilingual Signs: How Language Influences Shoppers,” forthcoming in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Signage and Wayfinding.
  • Donald E. Weston Professor of Marketing Frank Kardes, PhD, tallied his 120th publication, a coauthored article titled “Erroneous consumer evaluations in the marketplace: How consumer evaluations are biased by raw performance scores” in Psychology & Marketing
  • Clarkson and Lindner doctoral alumni Cony Ho, PhD ’20, and Dan Grossman, PhD ’20, published an article in Motivation and Emotion titled “Goal paralysis: How bad luck affects goal commitment.” 

Summer 2023

  • Clarkson had his paper "Great expectations: argument order expectations shape the efficacy of order effects in one-sided advertisements,” published in Marketing Letters.

Spring 2023

  • Professor Jane Sojka, PhD, had her paper "Women's Leadership Development: What's Next?" accepted for presentation at the 83rd Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management.
  • KardesKellaris and their coauthors had their paper “The reference dependence roots of inaction inertia: A query theory account” published in Plos One.
  • Assistant professor Noah Van Bergen, PhD and his coauthor had “The Influence of Sound Logo Instruments on Brand Personality Perceptions: An Investigation of Brand Ruggedness and Sophistication” in Journal of Business Research
  • Clarkson and coauthors published “Degree of group consensus shapes perceived power structures and decision-process evaluations of groups,” in Group Processes & Intergroup Relations.
  • Kardes, Mantel and PhD candidate Alberto Barchetti published “The influence of positive affect on sensitivity to important omissions,” Frontiers in Psychology.
  • Kardes and three other participants, including formal PhD student Ryan Gaffney, published “The Benefits of Deciding Now and Not Later: The Influence of the Timing Between Acquiring Knowledge and Deciding on Decision Confidence, Omission Neglect Bias, and Choice Deferral,” in Judgment and Decision Making.
  • Clarkson and coauthors published "Political Ideology and Cultural Consumption: The Role of Flexibility in Shaping Liberal and Conservative Preferences for Global-Local Experiences" published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.

Real-world Business Insights

See our faculty’s research in action as it drives decisions and practices for real-world business problems:

Fear may cost you

Adaval-Rashmi1

Rashmi Adaval, PhD, Professor of Marketing.

Many investors faced the dilemma of whether or not to invest in the aftermath of the COVID-19 market crash. But what can be learned from the outcome of this event?  

Through experimental data Professor of Marketing Rashmi Adaval, PhD, and her coauthors discovered that although individuals are hesitant to invest overall, investors were more likely to select high-priced stocks in a fear-based market crash when they do choose to invest, as they viewed these as more stable compared to lower-priced ones.  

“The key point to emphasize is that people read more into a stock’s price than might be warranted,” said Adaval. 

Takeaways

  • In a fear-based market crash, investors often view high-priced stocks as more stable compared to lower-priced stock options. 
  • Investors tend to display biases in decision making when selecting stocks in light of market crashes fueled by catastrophic events. Flawed or discordant logic thus drives them to be more drawn to high-priced stocks.

Publication

“Fear in the Stock Market: How COVID-19 Affects Preference for High- and Low- Priced Stocks,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.

Lindner Faculty

Rashmi Adaval, PhD, Professor of Marketing 

Coauthors

Liang Shen, Lindner marketing doctoral student

Jorge Pena-Marin, PhD, IESE Business School, University of Navarra


Research Highlights

Noah VanBergen, PhD, assistant professor of marketing, explored the intersection of rational and emotional thought around decision-making in his coauthored paper "More Rational or More Emotional than Others? Lay Beliefs about Decision-Making Strategies," which was published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.