Consumer Behavior News

July 26, 2024

Top Headlines

Does the Onset of Daylight Saving Time Lead to an Unhealthy Lifestyle?

July 23, 2024 — Consumers' attitudes and health behaviors respond negatively to the switch to daylight saving ...

Pie in the Face? Why Inflicting Mild Pain on Others Pays Off

June 20, 2024 — A marketing professor articulates the appeal of inflicting mild misfortune on others, such as tossing pies into faces, for the purpose of charitable fundraising. The paper provides insights on how to best use this strategy to maximize charitable ...

New Study Challenges 'Pop Psychology' Myths About Habits

June 6, 2024 — By ditching 'pop psychology myths' about habits, we can better understand our habits and take more effective action, according to ...

Social Media Use and Sleep Duration Connected to Brain Activity in Teens

May 30, 2024 — A new study found a distinct relationship between sleep duration, social media usage, and brain activation across brain regions that are key for executive control and reward ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:57pm EDT

The Time It Takes a Person to Decide Can Predict Their Preference

June 20, 2024 — Researchers have found that people can infer hidden social preferences by observing how fast others make social decisions. The study shows that when someone knows the options being considered by ...

Brain Damage Reveals Part of the Brain Necessary for Helping Others

May 27, 2024 — Our willingness to help others is governed by a specific brain region pinpointed by researchers in a study of patients with brain damage to that ...

Large Language Models Can't Effectively Recognize Users' Motivation, but Can Support Behavior Change for Those Ready to Act

May 16, 2024 — Large language model-based chatbots can't effectively recognize users' motivation when they are hesitant about making healthy behavior changes, but ...

Infected: Understanding the Spread of Behavior

Apr. 23, 2024 — A team of researchers found that long-tie connections accelerate the speed of social ...

People Who Use Willpower Alone to Achieve Goals, Resist Temptation, Deemed More Trustworthy

Apr. 11, 2024 — People who use willpower to overcome temptations and achieve their goals are perceived as more trustworthy than those who use strategies that involve ...

Can the Bias in Algorithms Help Us See Our Own?

Apr. 9, 2024 — New research shows that people recognize more of their biases in algorithms' decisions than they do in their own -- even when those decisions are the ...

People Make More Patient Decisions When Shown the Benefits First

Apr. 8, 2024 — Psychologists asked experiment participants to choose to receive $40 in seven days or $60 in 30 days, for example, under a variety of time constraints. The experiment showed that people tend to make ...

Nudging in a Virtual Supermarket for More Animal Welfare

Apr. 4, 2024 — It may be possible to change the purchasing behavior of consumers noticeably using some simple strategies. At least this is what a new study indicates. The researchers investigated the effect of ...

New Technique Helps AI Tell When Humans Are Lying

Mar. 18, 2024 — Researchers have developed a new training tool to help artificial intelligence (AI) programs better account for the fact that humans don't always tell the truth when providing personal information. ...

What Math Tells Us About Social Dilemmas

Feb. 26, 2024 — Human coexistence depends on cooperation. Individuals have different motivations and reasons to collaborate, resulting in social dilemmas, such as the well-known prisoner's dilemma. Scientists now ...

When There's Money to Lose, Phone Usage While Driving Drops

July 10, 2024 — Researchers discovered that feedback plus cash incentives designed with insights from behavioral science reduces phone use while ...

We Spend More With Cashless Payments

June 11, 2024 — A study has found that when using cashless methods of payment, individuals tend to spend more when ...

Unregulated Sales of a Toxic and Hallucinogenic Mushroom Endanger Public Health

June 10, 2024 — Americans' interest in a potentially harmful 'magic mushroom' is soaring, according to a new study. The scientists suggest that the growing market for Amanita muscaria may be sparked ...

Basic Income Can Double Global GDP While Reducing Carbon Emissions

June 7, 2024 — Giving a regular cash payment to the entire world population has the potential to increase global gross domestic product (GDP) by 130%, according to a new analysis. Researchers suggest that charging ...

The Protestant Work Ethic Could Explain a Liking for 'Natural' Healthcare

June 6, 2024 — A strong belief in the Protestant Work Ethic might underpin the decision-making of many people choosing 'natural' approaches to healthcare, new research suggests. Academics say their paper ...

Sunshine Spurs Spending: Investors Bet Big on Sunny Days

June 3, 2024 — New research has found a connection between pleasant weather conditions and higher investment in lottery-like ...

Under Stress, an Observer Is More Likely to Help the Victim Than to Punish the Perpetrator

May 16, 2024 — Being stressed while witnessing injustice may push your brain towards altruism, according to a new ...

Scent Sells -- But the Right Picture Titillates Both Eyes and Nose, Research Finds

May 2, 2024 — Scented products with relevant images on their packaging and branding, such as flowers or fruit, are more attractive to potential customers and score better in produce evaluations, new research ...

Economic Wealth May Be Linked With Happiness in China -- If Inequality Is Low

Apr. 10, 2024 — A country's economic prosperity is linked with improved well-being in its residents, according to a new ...

Making the Future Too Bright: How Wishful Thinking Can Point Us in the Wrong Direction

Mar. 28, 2024 — Everyone indulges in wishful thinking now and again. But when is that most likely to happen and when could it actually be harmful? A new study demonstrates unequivocally that the greater the ...

New Study Reveals Unintended Ethical Faultline in Team-Based Reward Systems

Mar. 14, 2024 — Employers who have introduced team-based rewards systems to foster creativity, collaboration, productivity and sales may want to look again at a system that new research shows can create an ...

Combination of Group Competition and Repeated Interactions Promotes Cooperation

Feb. 22, 2024 — How did cooperative behavior prevail in human evolution? Researchers have challenged two prevailing explanations -- repeated interactions on the one hand or group competition on the other. Instead, ...

Unravelling the Genetic and Environmental Influences on Trust

Feb. 20, 2024 — Trust, a cornerstone of human interaction, has a significant genetic component, according to new ...

If Your TV Spoke to You, Would You Buy It? Study Finds People Spend More on Some 'Talking Products'

Feb. 20, 2024 — New research used brain scanning technology to understand the effect of advertisements that try to sell products with talking versions of themselves. The work suggests that that anthromorphic ...

Older Adults Rely More on Trust in Decision Making. It Could Open Them Up to Scams

Feb. 13, 2024 — Elderly adults lose billions to financial scams by people they trust every year. New psychological research suggests this vulnerability could be linked to older adults' overrliance on initial ...

Why Politics Bring out the Worst in Us

Feb. 8, 2024 — In a survey involving a total of 2,472 respondents, researchers asked participants about nonpolitical and political moral behavior and nonpolitical and political moral tolerance. They found people ...

It's True, Happiness Doesn't Cost Much

Feb. 5, 2024 — Many Indigenous peoples and local communities around the world are leading very satisfying lives despite having very little money. This research shows that many societies with very low monetary ...

Women Farmers Quantitatively Linked to Better Community Well-Being

Jan. 17, 2024 — Having more women in agriculture is associated with greater community well-being, according to researchers. Their work suggests that women farmers approach their operations in ways that positively ...

Influencers' Vulnerabilities: A Double-Edged Sword

Jan. 2, 2024 — New research finds that social media platforms and the metrics that reward content creators for revealing their innermost selves to fans open creators up to identity-based ...

Prone to Abandoning New Year's Resolutions? Research Suggests Blaming Money Worries Rather Than Being Time-Poor

Dec. 15, 2023 — People who abandon New Year's resolutions or other commitments can maintain the respect of their peers by blaming external factors such as lack of money, new research suggests. Studies have ...