2019 Academic Marketing Climate Survey

Nice quote in the Wall Street Journal.

Nice quote in the Guardian today: CVS stops selling cigarettes. Will competitors follow?

My paper with Rosalind Chow got some nice media coverage on the Pacific Standard website. See it here.

Steven Novella over at Neurologicablog has a nice discussion of our Psi article here.

My paper with Justin and George in JCR has gotten a little bit of media attention. Here are the links:

– Want To Have Your Cake And Enjoy It, Too? in Prevention.
– Don’t Burn Out in Science Codex
– Don’t burn out: Enjoy your favorite products more by consuming them less frequently in Phys.org

Always nice to get some attention!

Justin found this nice little write up of our paper on the WSJ website.

See here.

Anya Litvak over at the Pittsburgh Business Times wrote an article about one of my lessons in my Marketing 1 class (on pricing). If only I had a subscription and could actually read the article! There’s a reasonable photo included too.

Link here.

So my hometown (sort of) newspaper apparently picked up my paper with Tom a while ago. Who knew! Story here.

How cool is this: The Power of Negative Thought. My most esoteric paper gets coverage in a popular science magazine!

According to Smartmoney and the Pittsburgh Tribune, I’m now an expert on weddings (and also an expert on being terribly mis-quoted). Basically, my contention is that the reason we’re seeing more couples asking for charitable contributions as wedding gifts in lieu of traditional wedding registries is that couples are getting married at a considerably older age (up from around 22 years old to 27 years old since 1950) and with considerably more money (especially women…up from 8k/year income to about 22k per year since 1950). Instead of needing yet another set of dishes that will only serve to clutter up their homes, couples are now asking their guests to donate to charities.

The APA put out a press release about the JEP:G paper with Tom and it wound up getting picked up quite a bit!

1. Bad Times May Seem Worse If You Expect to Repeat Them

U.S. News & World Report – ‎February 10, 2011

This could be an adaptive reaction, said the researchers in a news release from the American Psychological Association. People may attempt to maintain their …

2. Bad Times May Seem Worse If You Expect to Repeat Them

3. The Worst Is Yet to Come

Daily Rx – February 16, 2011
New research shows that bad things can seem worse if people know that they will experience them again. Conversely, people remember bad experiences as being less unpleasant or painful if they believe it will not happen to them again.

4. The past hurts worse when it will return

Psychology Today – February 15, 2011

A study by Jeff Galak and Tom Meyvis in the February, 2011 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General suggests that it is useful to remember …

5. Bad Times May Seem Worse If You Expect to Repeat Them | Health32.Com

Health32.com – February 11, 2011

Bad Times May Seem Worse If You Expect to Repeat Them.— People are more likely to recall an unpleasant experience as …

6. Bad Times May Seem Worse If You Expect to Repeat Them …

Mesothelioma Online – February 13, 2011

Bad Times May Seem Worse If You Expect to Repeat Them — People are more.

7. Bad Times May Seem Worse If You Expect to Repeat Them | Diet Care

Dietcare.net – February 13, 2011

People are more likely to recall an unpleasant experience as being less painful or annoying if they believe it is.

8. Science Today News

Science Today – February 11, 2011

Bad Times May Seem Worse If You Expect to Repeat Them. People are more likely to recall an unpleasant experience as being less painful or annoying if they. …

9. Clinical Connection – Health News

Clinical Connection – February 12, 2011

Bad Times May Seem Worse If You Expect to Repeat Them. But recollections are less painful if you think the worst is over, …

10. Bad Things Seem Even Worse If People Have to Live Through Them Again

Planmybabyreviews.com – February 10, 2011

Bad Things Seem Even Worse If People Have to Live Through Them Again Prospect of repeating an experience can change how one remembers it, research says. …

11. Bad Times May Seem Worse If You Expect to Repeat Them

World News.com – February 10, 2011

Bad things seem even worse if people expect them to happen again soon …

12. Bad Things Seem Even Worse If People Have to Live Through Them Again

The Mental Health Social Worker – February 9, 2011

When people think unpleasant events are over, they remember them as being less painful or annoying than when they expect them to happen again, pointing to the power of expectation to help people brace for the worst, according to studies published by the American Psychological Association.

13. Study: Bad Things Are Worse the Second Time Around

Village Voice – February 8, 2011

This is backed up by research published from the American Psychological Association. The studies exposed people to irritating things, like vacuum cleaner …

14. Internal corruption is worse than external terrorism | India News …

India News – February 8, 2011

Bad things seem worse if you live them again – Bad or annoying events seem much worse if people have to go through them again. …

15. Science Centric | News | Bad things seem even worse if people have …

Science Centric – February 8, 2011

When people think unpleasant events are over, they remember them as being less painful or annoying than when they expect them to happen again, …

16. Disaster Strikes Article Directory » Bad things seem even worse if …

Disasterstrikes.org – February 9, 2011

Bad things seem even worse if people expect them to happen again soon

17. Bad Things Seem Even Worse If People Have To Live Through Them …

Thenewslist.com – February 8, 2011

When people think unpleasant events are over, they remember them as being less painful or annoying than when they expect them to happen again, …

18. Bad Things Seem Even Worse If People Have To Live Through Them …

Neurotalk – February 8, 2011

Bad Things Seem Even Worse If People Have To Live Through Them Again

19. Bad Things Seem Even Worse If People Have To Live Through Them …

The Star – February 8, 2011

When people think unpleasant events …

20. Bad things seem even worse if people have to live through them …

Niuwsfeiten.be – February 8, 2011

Bad things seem even worse if people have to live through them again.

21. Bad Things Seem Even Worse If People Have To Live Through Them Again

Medical News Today – ‎February 8, 2011

… pointing to the power of expectation to help people brace for the worst, according to studies published by the American Psychological Association. …

22. Why we make bad things seem even worse

Times of India – ‎February 8, 2011

New studies suggest that when people think unpleasant events are over, they remember them as being less painful or annoying than when they expect them to …

23. Repeating bad experience makes it seem worse

Sify – February 8, 2011

Bad or annoying events seem much worse if people have to go through them again. ‘The prospect of repeating an experience can, …

24. Bad things seem even worse if people expect them to happen again soon

TopNews – February 8, 2011

New studies suggest that when people think unpleasant events are over, they remember them as being less painful or annoying than when …

25. Bad Things Seem Even Worse if People Have to Live Through Them Again

HealthNewsDigest – February 7, 2011

When people think unpleasant events are over, they remember them as being less painful or annoying than when they expect them to happen again, pointing to the power of expectation to help people brace for the worst, according to studies published by the American Psychological Association.

26. Bad things seem even worse if people have to live through them again

ScienceBlog.com – ‎February 7, 2011

WASHINGTON — When people think unpleasant events are over, they remember them as being less painful or annoying than when they expect them to happen again, …

27. Bad things seem even worse if people have to live through them again

Pysorg – February 7, 2011

When people think unpleasant events are over, they remember them as being less painful or annoying than when they expect them to happen again, …

28. Bad Things Seem Even Worse If People Have To Live Through Them …

Redorbit.com – February 7, 2011

Bad Things Seem Even Worse If People Have To Live Through Them Again. Prospect of repeating an experience can …

29. Bad things seem even worse if people have to live through them …

Escience News – February 7, 2011

Bad things seem even worse if people have to live through them again.

30. BAD Things Seem Even Worse if People Have to Live Through Them …

Topix.com – February 7, 2011

When people think unpleasant events are …

31. Bad things seem even worse if people have to …

Lifescience Log – February 7, 2011

Bad things seem even worse if people have to live through them again. When people think unpleasant events are over, they remember them as being less painful …

32. ScienceDaily: Latest Science News

Science Daily – February 8, 2011

… Bad Things Seem Even Worse If People Have to Live Through Them Again ·

33. Repeating bad experience makes it seem worse

Thaindian.com – February 7, 2011

Bad or annoying events seem much worse if people have to go through them again. The prospect of repeating an experience can, in fact, change how people …

34. Repeating bad experience makes it seem worse | Science / Technology

Indiatalkies.com – February 8, 2011

Bad or annoying events seem much worse if people have to go through them again. ‘The prospect of repeating an experience can, in fact, …

35. Repeating bad experience makes it seem worse | China News.Net

Chinanews.net – February 8, 2011

Bad or annoying events seem much worse if people have to go through them again.

36. Repeating bad experience makes it seem worse | Inditop

Inditop.com – February 8, 2011

Bad or annoying events seem much worse if people have to go through them again. ‘The prospect of repeating an experience can, …

UPDATE: And one more: FYI Living

The WSJ just did a story on pricing strategies that companies use during the holiday season. They asked me on about my thoughts on this. A 20 minute conversions turned into 2 short lines. Oh well, better than nothing.

Story here.

Daryl Bem, one of the most influential and important social psychologists of our time, recently had a paper accepted at the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the premier social psych journal.  This, in and of itself, would not be noteworthy since Dr. Bem has published numerous papers in JPSP. What is noteworthy, however, is that in this paper he conducted 9 experiments that demonstrate the existence of precognition. Yup, that’s right, ESP (or Psi as he calls it). All of the studies are incredibly well run and I have no methodological qualms with them. However, given the nature of the claim, that ESP exists, I felt that it was my duty as a scientist to attempt to replicate his findings. I teamed up with Leif Nelson and we recreated Study 8 (retroactive facilitation of memory). The gist of the study is that studying after an exam helps you on the exam itself. In this case, the exam was a memory task involving 48 common nouns.

In any case, we ran this study online and wrote up the results (tl;dr: we did not replicate his results) in a short paper which can be downloaded on SSRN.

I also put together a public version of the experiment that anyone can try out (and even get their Psi score). You can try out the experiment here.

We’ve also started to get a bit of press for our failed replication at New Scientist. And now at Cosmic Log at MSNBC.

Thanks to the HBR story, here’s another blog that covered the TV Commercials paper.

http://www.bnet.com/blog/harvard/research-shocker-tv-viewers-prefer-ads-with-their-shows/8475

Duane Smith over at Abnormal Interests posted a nice little bit about the Fluency paper. Thanks for the coverage!

Duane apparently found out about our research via the Mark Twain Forum, which heard about it on the Boston Globe.

Better late then never, I suppose. Harvard Business Review has an article covering the TV Commercials paper. The article is here.

HBR is covering our paper (better late than never), and a blogger picked up an interview that Leif did about said coverage.

Here it is.

Ulf Clarén, a journalist for the Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan recently emailed me about the TV Commercials Paper. Here’s the resulting article. Feel free to translate it for me.

A few moments ago the Dean and Deputy Dean called me to their office. First, I’m not fired, which, of course, is the first thought that crosses your mind when two Deans want to see you. It was actually just the opposite: I was awarded the BP Junior Faculty Chair! That means my teaching requirement goes down by one point with the goal of spending that time on research.  I’m honored and excited!

Aside from hiring me, CMU is sending some strong cues that they like what I’m up to. Today I was featured on the front pages of both the CMU and Tepper websites.

I am genuinely flattered.

I recently did an interview with Shelley Duffy of WZPT Star 100.7‘s Morning Show about the Variety Amnesia paper. The segment aired this week and here’s the mp3.

How is it that I had no clue about any of these until I checked the JCR publicity page?

– Trick Yourself Out Of Relationship Boredom via Your Tango
– Sick of watching your favourite films? via The Times of India
– How to never get sick of watching your favourite film ad nauseum via Thaindian News
– How consumers continue enjoying their favorite experiences via ScienceBlog
– How Consumers Continue Enjoying Their Favorite Experiences via Science Daily
– Mixing memory with reality can bring pleasure to the routine via Lanka Newspaper (a Sri Lankan paper)

Robin Lloyd over at Live Science also picked up on the variety paper. The article can be found here.

The article was also apparently syndicated to:
– MSNBC
– US News and World Report
– KAKE 10…an ABC channel
– WSAW 7…a CBS channel

– Yahoo! News

I was recently interviewed by Lynne Peeples over at ScientificAmerican.com about the Variety Amnesia paper with Justin and Joe. The resulting article can be found here.

This is the first time I’ve been referred to as Professor in print. Feels pretty good!

The PR folks at Stern asked Justin to put together a press release about our borders research. Here’s what just came across business wire.

Link.

Tom picked up on this very random coverage of the TV paper on a Hawaiian weather website. Scroll down to “Interesting 5”

Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / February 24-25, 2009

As Tom put it, finally we’ve been covered by the Belgian press: http://www.standaard.be/Artikel/Detail.aspx?artikelId=D228EOVO

Turns out the research has been picked up as far as India.

Watching commercials leads to greater enjoyment of TV programs

Michael over at The Psych Files, did a very thorough podcast about the TV Commercials paper.

Have a listen here: Episode 89: Don’t Touch That Dial! Why You Should Love Commercials

My new home:

Bax & O’Brien of WAQY, a Massachusetts radio station interviewed me the other day. Fun interview!

Listen here.

Joel Rose asked me to go to NPR’s NY studio to chat about the TV Commercials paper. It was really interesting to be in an actual studio (as opposed to a phone interview). Of course, as always, it would have  been nice to actually get some more air time, but I’ll take what I can get.

Listen here.

Monica Hesse of the Washington Post interviewed me a few days ago and put out this interesting article. It speaks to the idea that TV shows are structured to include commercial breaks and that without them the flow of the program is hurt. She also applies our findings to corroborate her point. All in all, a very nice article.

Give Us a Commercial Break!

Leif was interviewed on CBC’s The Point.

Have a listen. (Part 1: Start at 17:36)

Fox News did a very silly segment (3/3/2009 7:27:50pm EST) about the TV Commercials paper. They took a 5 minutes interview with Tom Meyvis and turned it into 10 seconds of Tom and 60 seconds of random people on the street saying that commercials are stupid. 

After quite a bit of effort, I’ve managed to get the video all set up. Enjoy.

Science: You Love Commercials

Single most entertaining reader comment:

To corroborate: I find that my erections are longer lasting and more enjoyable if I take an occasional break from mercilessly beating my manservant about the chest, neck and thighs. [The Hon JudgeSmails]

Benedict Carey, the author of the NYT article about our research was interviews on The Take Away this morning. I find it funny that the interviewer thought it was best to interview someone one step removed from the research rather than someone who actually conducted it. 

Commercial breaks may be good for the brain

This is the biggest one yet: the NYT. I couldn’t be happier.

Liked the Show? Maybe It Was the Commercials

The Telegraph

SerienJunkies (Dutch)

ABC News Blog

4VF.net

Entertainment & Showbiz.com

MeD India

Buzz7

Ma.hu (Hungary)

Fox Toledo 

San Diego Union-Tribune (Front page on the print version!)

Sean Gregory of Time Magazine wrote a very thorough article about the TV Commercials Paper. It can be found here: Do TV Commercials Make you Happier?

JCR put out their press release and now there’s even more coverage. Tom just did an interview for BBC and I did one for the Washington Post (will post separately when the article gets written) and am doing another for NPR on Monday. I suspect that no paper I write will ever get as much coverage as this one has gotten.

Globe and Mail

David Hauslaib’s Jossip

Hartfort Courant

Science Daily

Sindh Today

Science Mode

The Undercurrent

Teknikka&Talous (Finland)

Forte (Estonia)

Hartford Courant

Silver Scorpio

For the first time in a while, I actually clicked on a banner ad. Facebook linked me to Logo Tournament, a site for crowd-sourcing logo designs. The idea is that you post your requirments for a logo and put up some prize money (min = $250). Then you let all those out of work graphic designers out there compete for your love. Okay, just your approval, but you get the idea. I browsed around a bit and have to say that I am

The TV Commercials paper was covered ty the Freakonimcs Blog. That’s ALMOST like being in the NY Times…almost.

AgencySpy

Captivating Connections

RachelEnchanted’s Blog

[H]Enthusiast

Snitch

CelebWalls

James Hibberd’s article at the Hollywood Reporter about the TV Commercials paper attracted quite a few negative comments from his readers. As such, he asked to interview me in order to get the story straight.

Here’s the interview. Let’s just hope it makes things clear for all those dissenting readers.

Perez Hilton

Entertainment Weekly

Satlaser Press

Nanyang 100

Index.hu

MediaPost News

Again thanks to our PR folks, Reuters picked up the TV Commercials Paper. And that turned into quite a few syndications as you can see from the screenshot:

Thanks to the efforts of the Stern and Rady PR departments, the TV Commercial paper was covered on the Huffington Pos .and the Hollywood Reporter.  I’ll update this post if there is any new news.

The PR folks at Stern and Rady put out a press release on Business Wire this morning re the TV Commercial paper. Let’s see what comes of it.

My paper with Joseph Redden and Justin Kruger, “Variety Amnesia: Recalling Past Variety Can Accelerate Recovery From Satiation”, has just been conditionally accepted at the Journal of Consumer Research! Time to celebrate.

I wish bloggers would contact me or one of my coauthors about their posts. For now, google is helping me find the coverage:

Cogsci Librarian

This is Herd

Ad Week

Thanks to Jesse I now know about two more blogs that covered the TV Commercials paper. 

Pop Matters

The Atlantic

Here’s the radio  interview that I recently did for Future Tense.

Link to interview.

Brian Reich at Fast Company also picked up the TV Commercials paper. Here’s the story:  “Commercials Improve TV? I seriously doubt that.” Brian freely admits that he has only read the Boston Globe blurb and our abstract, but still goes after us. Without reading the paper itself, his criticisms appear fair, but are all acknowledged and refuted in the paper.

Kevin Lewis over at the Boston Globe apparently got wind of the TV Commercials article and wrote a small blurb yesterday. Here’s the link and here’s the copy: 

WITH THE ADOPTION of digital video recorders, fewer people watch commercials on TV anymore. After all, it’s not like anyone wants to watch commercials (except during the Super Bowl, maybe). However, new research says that you may be missing out. When college students were asked to watch an episode of “Taxi,” they enjoyed the version with commercials more than the version without commercials. The same thing happened when watching a nature show, such that students who watched the version with commercials were more willing to donate to wildlife preservation. The effect arises because the novelty of an experience can wear off, and a break can reset one’s attention. There are a couple caveats to the effect, though: It doesn’t apply to older people (with their longer attention spans), or to exciting shows. Of course, if younger people watch only exciting shows, then advertisers may be out of luck anyway.

It’s obviously nice to get the coverage, but it would have been nicer had Mr. Lewis contacted one of us for a comment. Then, perhaps, he wouldn’t have been quite so dramatic in his statments of when and for whom this effect doesn’t apply.

Recently, Ars Technica, a technology blog wrote a nice summary of the paper that Leif, Tom and I published, “Enhancing the Television Viewing Experience through Commercial Interruptions”. I was actually quite surprised by the depth of the post and the fact that the author likely read the entire paper and not just the abstract (or title). He understood the main ideas and didn’t cherry pick topics to suit his needs. I commend him for this. 

However, the comments posted in response to this post are absolutely hilarious. One of the major points of this paper is that despite the fact that TV commercials often make the TV show in which they are embedded more enjoyable, people fail to appreciate this. Let me say that again, people fail to appreciate this. And yet, the vast majority of the comments are of the form: “I don’t believe this research. After all, I hate commercials.” I couldn’t ask for anything better. Here are some choice examples:

Sorry, I’m not buying it.

Watching a TV show on DVD is SO much better than mainly because of no commercials.

I always skip through the commercials when watching stuff on the DVR which is 90+ Percentage of all my TV watching.

And another:

The fact that a lot people keep watching a series when they record it and skip the commercials proves that the study couldn’t be more wrong. Hell, some even only watch recorded shows just to skip the commercials. Others even drop cable and satellite in favor of watching the same shows on DVD, Hulu or even Bittorrent! I’m sorry, but real world evidence is completely counter to the study’s biased results.

I love that his example “proves that the study couldn’t be more wrong.”

We also make a point in the paper that this effect can not be due to contrast effects. In other words, commercials don’t make the show more enjoyable because they make the television program look better by comparison. We demonstrate this in one experiment by including a  commercial break that is as enjoyable as the program and in another experiment where all participants receive the same commercials, just that for some of them the commercials disrupt the program and for others they don’t.  Here’s a great comment suggesting just the opposite:

This is like saying if you eat dog crap in between meals, your regular food will taste better. Although it’s probably true, I’d rather just not eat the dog crap.

There was also a decent amount of inquiry as to who funded this research. The simple answer is that the Stern School of Business did. There was absolutely no outside funding and their was no subversive purpose to the research. Then again, from the comments:

Now, who wants to lay down a bet that this was funded by an ad company?

All in all, I’m simply very amused. People in the blogosphere often don’t read the entire paper (though I again commend the author of the original post for doing so) and choose to instead ignorantly criticize everything. On the surface it’s entertaining, but there is a more sinister side to this ignorance. Commenters will walk away thinking that they understand a concept that they really don’t. They will propagate this misinformation throughout the virtual and real world. And they will subsequently create false knowledge. This is the exact opposite goal of scientific inquiry and a real problem.

Oh well, for now I’ll stick with this being entertaining.

I recently  had the pleasure of chatting on the phone with Jon Gordon of Future Tense, a radio personality for Minnesota Public Radio. Jon interviewed me about the paper that Leif, Tom, and I recently had electronically published at the Journal of Consumer Research, “Enhancing the Television Viewing Experience through Commercial Interruptions.” I have to admit that I was a bit nervous, but Jon did a great job of asking me poignant questions that (hopefully) yielded coherent and thoughtful answers. 

The interview will likely air on Monday, though not in NYC. Thankfully, the broadcast will also go out over the internet and will be saved as a podcast and downloadable MP3 (all at this site).

I can’t wait to hear how it comes out!

Carnegie Mellon asked me to have a professional portrait taken for their website. I figured they wouldn’t object to me using the portrait for this site as well.  

I would like to thank Dennis at The Visual Image in Merrick, NY who was both very professional and quite fun. I’m quite pleased with the final product and hope you are too.

For those of you that don’t know, a couple of years ago I created consumerbehaviorlab.com, an online research lab. I primarily use Flash to program the experiments and have collected a great deal of invaluable data. To date, my colleagues and I have run 80 experiments and collected data from 14,056 participants. Not bad for just over 2 years of up time! There are currently 2,755 active participants of varied demographic backgrounds. 

This isn’t an attempt to brag, but rather a suggestion for other behavioral researchers: collect data online! It’s easy, fast, and inexpensive. We usually let participants participate for about 5 days (though 95% complete the study within 24 hours) and pay them with entry into a $50 lottery. When was the last time “real life” participants came that cheaply? So if you have the means, go out and conquer! There is much data to be had.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about online data collection, so if you have any questions about how I do it, don’t hesitate to ask.

Welcome to my new academic page!

I plan to keep all my academic happenings up to date and perhaps even provide some commentary on what is going on in the academic world.

I would like to thank the excelent developers at Vercingetorix Technologies for building this site. The bulk of the work was building the back-end  (all WordPress) and I couldn’t be more pleased with how it turned out. The idea is that every entry (publication, presentation, collaborator, etc…) is its own “blog post” and thus can be very easily updated and/or moved around (Working Paper -> Publication…assuming all goes well!). 

If you have any questions about the content of the site or the development process, feel free to contact me at jgalak@stern.nyu.edu.