Tag: Consumer Behavior

Anxious people take fewer risks — this is not surprising. However, a team of psychologists from the German Friedrich Schiller University Jena, together with partners from Würzburg in Germany and the Canadian University of Victoria have succeeded in making this decision process visible in the brain, allowing them to predict the behaviour of individuals. They

Struggling to finish that report for your boss? One way to increase your interest in a task is to add immediate rewards, rather than wait until the end to reward yourself, according to new Cornell research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology titled “It’s About Time: Earlier Rewards Increase Intrinsic Motivation.” Kaitlin

“Antibiotics can’t hurt. They might even make me feel better. Why not take a risk?” You may have had similar thoughts when sick with the flu or common cold. Your doctor may think so too. A new study led by David Broniatowski, an assistant professor in the George Washington University’s department of engineering management and

A team of researchers led by Dr. Catharine Winstanley at the University of British Columbia have uncovered a network of regions in the brain that are involved in determining the choice of working harder to get a bigger reward, or putting in a lesser effort and receiving a smaller reward. Understanding how the brain makes

Top-ranked reviewers on online retail sites such as Amazon.com may influence purchases, but a research study from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business finds that those who post reviews less often and more informally can be seen as more trustworthy and have more of an impact on sales. Shyam Gopinath, assistant professor of marketing at

A recent study finds that young people who get financial support from their parents have greater professional success, highlighting one way social inequality is transmitted from one generation to the next. “The question underlying this work was whether parental support gives adult children an advantage or hinders their development,” says Anna Manzoni, an associate professor

People rely on financial managers, doctors and lawyers to be as objective as possible when making decisions about investments, health and legal issues, but findings from a new study suggest that an unexpected factor could be influencing these choices. In a series of experiments, researchers found that people at higher elevations in an office building

For many people, one of the unspoken rules for being cool is maintaining an emotionally inexpressive attitude. This message is reinforced through advertisements where fashion models rarely smile and by quotes from celebrities. In an article in the Huffington Post, Kanye West said he doesn’t smile in photographs because “it just wouldn’t look as cool.”