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On Amir

Wolfe Family Presidential Endowed Chair in Life Sciences Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Professor of Marketing

Amir's research focuses on using psychological and economic principles to identify successful strategies in different market settings. He investigates different customer decision-making mechanisms and their influences on pricing and promotion strategies, on decision making under risk and uncertainty, and on preference dynamics. He also writes about how insights from research on decision making and behavioral economics may be used to improve business practices and policy making.

Amir has received several research awards from the Marketing Science Institute and from the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation. Prior to coming to UC San Diego, he was an assistant professor of marketing at Yale University. Amir received his Ph.D. in management science and marketing from MIT’s Sloan School of Management in 2003.

Papers

The entrenchment effect: Why people persist with less-preferred behaviors, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (forthcoming). (with Alicea Lieberma & Ziv Carmon)

Dominance Effects in the Wild, Journal of Consumer Research (forthcoming). (with Ariel Fridman & Karsten Hansen)

Consumer Pandemic Coping: A Stage Model of Covid-19 Response , Journal of the Association of Consumer Research (2023). (with Jean Zhang)

Cardiorespiratory Fitness and Depression Symptoms among Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Cooper Center Longitudinal StudyPreventive Medicine Reports, 30, December  (2022).  (with David Leonard, Laura F. DeFina, Carolyn E. Barlow, Jeffrey Drope, Ayelet Gneezy, Shay Tzafrir, Karen G. Chartier, & Mahmoud Qadan)

Social Information Decreases Giving in Late-stage Fundraising CampaignsPLOS-ONE, (2022).  (with Coby Morvinski, & Matt J. Lupoli) 

Improving Cardiac Rehabilitation Patient Adherence via Personalized Interventions,  PLOS-ONE, August 29, 1-15, (2022). (with Karen B. Aharon, Avital Gershfeld-Litvin, Irene Nebutovsky, & Robert Klempfner)

The Importance of Selling Formats: When Integrating Purchase and Quantity Decisions Increases Sales, Marketing Science (2022). (with Kristen Duke)

What Makes People Happy? Decoupling the Experiential-Material ContinuumJournal of Consumer Psychology(2022). (with Evan Weingarten, Kristen Duke, Wendy liu, Rrebecca Hamilton, Gil Apple, Moran Cerf, Joe Goodman, Andrea Morales, Ed O’Brian, Jordi Quidbach, & Monic Sun)

A Voice Inside My Head: The Psychological and Behavioral Consequences of Auditory Technologies,  Organization Behavior and Human Decision Processes (2022). (with Alicea Lieberman & Juliana Schroeder)

Tangential Immersion: Increasing Consumer PersistenceJournal or Consumer Research  (2022). (with Alicea Lieberman & Andera Morales)

Mis-Nudging MoralityManagement Science (2022). (with Coby Morvinski & Silvia Saccardo).

Perspective Neglect: Inadequate Perspective Taking Limits CoordinationJudgment and Decision Making (2021) (with Elanor Williams & Allie Lieberman)

Experts Outperform Technology in Creative Markets, She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation (2020) (with Weingarten, Evan, Michael W. Meyer, & Amit Ashkenazi)

How Incentive Framing Can Harness the Power of Norms, Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes (2019) (with Alicea Lieberman & Kristen Duke)

Guilt Dynamics: Consequences of Temporally Separating Decisions and ActionsJournal of Consumer Research (2019) (with Kristen E. Duke) -- Winner of the 2019 Ferber Award.

Replicating the Effect of Moral Standards Accessibility on Dishonesty,  Author’s Response to the Replication Process, Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science (2018). (with Nina Mazar & Dan Ariely) 

How Context Affects Choice, Customer Needs and Solutions (2018). (with Raphael Thomadsen, Robert P. Rooderkerk, On Amir, Neeraj Arora, Bryan Bollinger, Karsten Hansen, Leslie John, Wendy Liu, Aner Sela, Vishal Singh, K. Sudhir, & Wendy Wood) 

The Effect of an Interruption on Risk DecisionsJournal of Consumer Research (2017). (with Daniella Kupor & Wendy Liu) 

Liking Goes with Liking: An Intuitive Congruence between Preference and Prominence, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition (2018). (with Coby Morvinski). 

Is the Preference for Certainty Always So Certain? Journal of the Association of Consumer Research (2017). (with K. Duke and K. Goldsmith)

A Tutorial in Consumer Research:Keeping it Real in Experimental Research – Understanding When, Where, and How to Enhance Realism and Measure Consumer Behavior (2017). Journal of Consumer Research (with A. Morales and L. Lee)

Physical Activity Counseling in Primary Care: Insights from Public Health & Behavioral Economics (2017). CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians (with K. Shuval, T. Leonard, J. Drope, D.Katz, A.Patel, M. Shepard, and A.Grinstein)

'Ten Million Readers Can't Be Wrong!', or Can They? On the Role of Information About Adoption Stock in New Product Trial (2017). Marketing Science (with C. Morvinski and E. Muller)

How Non-Competes Stifle Performance (2014). Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb (with O. Lobel)

Driving Performance: A Growth Theory of Non-Compete Law, (2013). Stanford Technology Law Review, 16, 535-578 (with O. Lobel)

Liberalism and Lifestyle: Informing Regulatory Governance with Behavioral Research, (2012). European Journal of Risk Regulation, 1, 17-25 (with O. Lobel)

Can Uncertainty Improve Promotions?, (2010). Journal of Marketing Research, 47(6), 1070-1077 (with K.Goldsmith)

Choice Construction Versus Preference Construction: The Instability of Preferences Learned in Context, (2008). Journal of Marketing Research, April, 145-158 (with J.Levav)

In Search of Homo Economicus: Preference Consistency, Emotions, and Cognition, (2009). Journal of Consumer Research, (with D.Ariely and L.Lee)

Deciding Without Resources: Psychological Depletion and Choice in Context, (2009). Journal of Marketing Research, (with A.Pocheptsova, R.Dhar, and R. Baumeister)

The Dissociation between Monetary Assessments and Predicted Utility, (2008). Marketing Science, 27 (6), 1055-1064 (with D.Ariely and Z.Carmon)

The Dishonesty of Honest People: A Theory of Self-Concept Maintenance , (2008). Journal of Marketing Research, (with N.Mazar and D. Ariely) - Winner of the 2013 O'Dell Award

More Ways to Cheat - Expanding the Scope of Dishonesty , (2008). Journal of Marketing Research, (with N.Mazar and D. Ariely)

Resting on Laurels: The Effects of Discrete Progress Markers as SubGoals on Task Performance and Preferences, (2008), Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 34 (5), 1158-1171 (with D.Ariely)

Stumble, Nudge, Predict: How Behavioral Economics Informs Law and Policy (2008), Columbia Law Review, December, 2098-2138 (with O.Lobel)

Tough Choices: How Making Decisions Tires Your Brain, (2008). Scientific American, Mind & Brain: Mind Matters, July 22. 

Decisions by Rules: The Case of Unwillingness to Pay for Beneficial Delays, (2007). Journal of Marketing Research, February, 142-152 (with D.Ariely)

The Most Influential Age Hypothesis: Preference Formation and the Self , (with N.Mazar)

Motivating Discounts: Price-Motivated Consumer Reasoning, (with E.Dawson)

Innovation Motivation: Behavioral Effects of Post-Employment Restrictions, (with O. Lobel)

Risk Management for the Future: Age, Risk, and Choice Architecture, (with O. Lobel)

Behavioral Economics, Psychology, and Public Policy, (2005). Marketing Letters (Special Issue for the Sixth Choice Symposium), 16:3/4, 443-454.. (with D.Ariely, A.Cooke, D.Dunning, N.Epley, B.Koszegi, D.Lichtenstein, N.Mazar, S.Mullainathan, D.Prelec, E.Shafir, and J.Silva)

Liberating Limitations: Regret and Indecision in Consumer Choice, (with D.Ariely)

Book Chapters

Beyond the Lab: Using Data from the Field to Increase Research Validity, in Handbook of Research Methods in Consumer Psychology (2019), Frank R. Kardes, Paul M. Herr, and Nobert Schwarz, Editors, Routledge. (with Alicia Lieberman & Andrea C. Morales,). 

Making Consumption Decisions by Following Personal Rules, (with O.Lobel, and D.Ariely)

Research Areas

  • Marketing Strategy
  • Consumer Behavior
  • Pricing
  • Judgment and Decision Making
  • Risk and Uncertainty
  • Behavioral Economics
  • Business Analytics

Industry Areas

  • High-tech
  • Biotech
  • Defense
  • Online Marketplaces