Mini Conference Speakers
May 2025

Person with long blonde hair wearing a black blazer, smiling with arms crossed, in a modern indoor setting.

Ekaterina Y. Goncharova

Doctoral Candidate - MKTG

Abstract

The Impact of Income Volatility on Subjective Wealth and Financial Decisions

The Impact of Income Volatility on Subjective Wealth and Financial Decisions
Ekaterina Y. Goncharova and Wendy De La Rosa
Income volatility affects millions of consumers, including hourly wage workers with fluctuating work hours, project-based workers paid on a per-project basis, and even academics receiving summer support. Yet, its effects on consumers’ judgments and decisions remain poorly understood. Across 18 studies, including an analysis of two large-scale datasets of US consumers, this research demonstrates that higher (vs. lower) income volatility decreases consumers’ subjective wealth and, consequently their financial decisions, even when consumers’ objective wealth and payment frequency are held constant, and when uncertainty about the future is mitigated. All data, preregistrations, and materials are available at https://researchbox.org/2926&PEER_REVIEW_passcode=ABORVQ.First, we analyze 11,667 responses to the 2022 US Federal Reserve’s Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED), and document a negative association between income volatility and subjective wealth, even after accounting for people’s total income, education, financial literacy, income predictability, and other key covariates (Study 1). Next, we test the causal effects of income volatility on subjective wealth through a series of studies using a life simulation, developed with support and resources from the Wharton Behavioral Lab (WBL), where participants earn income over “14 days” in either a more (range: $8-$199, σ2=8,019.20) or less (range: $56-$148, σ2=1,570.54) volatile manner while holding constant the total income they earn and payment frequency, as well as other variables such as the number of above or below average earning days. Consistent with the SHED data, consumers in the higher volatility condition had lower average estimates of their 14 paychecks, which were highly skewed (skewness=9.12) and thus log-transformed as preregistered (Study 2A: Mhigher=4.40, SD=.51 vs. Mlower=4.52, SD=.21, t(298)=-2.54, p=.012, Cohen’s d=-.29) and lower subjective wealth (Mhigher=3.21, SD=1.22 vs. Mlower=3.51, SD=1.32, t(298)=-2.07, p=.039, Cohen’s d=-.24). As in the SHED data, the effect of income volatility on subjective wealth is moderated at higher (vs. lower) income levels (Study 3: interaction term: b=.28, t(596)=3.05, p=.002, Cohen’s f=.13), highlighting its disproportionate effect on lower-income individuals.
We then examine the downstream consequences of these subjective wealth differences on consumers’ financial decisions. First, we analyze the impact of income volatility on spending. An analysis of banking transactions of 6,873 US consumers (Study 6) shows that income volatility is associated with lower spending, even after controlling for consumers’ total monthly income and payment frequency, as well as person-level fixed effects. Consumers randomly assigned to receive income in a more (vs. less) volatile manner report both a lower likelihood of spending and lower spending intentions (log-transformed as preregistered due to skewness (skewness=2.95)), given their lower subjective wealth (Study 5A; 95.5% vs. 98.5%, z=-1.71, p=.088 and Mhigher=3.49, SD=1.12 vs. Mlower=3.91, SD=.94, t(398)=-4.06, p < .001, Cohen’s d=-0.41, respectively).
Finally, we help reconcile the nascent literature focused on income volatility and saving, which has documented conflicting experimental findings. We find that the effect of income volatility on saving intentions depends on how the saving question is framed (Study 7B): volatility decreases saving intentions when the ask is focused on efficacy beliefs (e.g., how much can you afford to save) (Mhigher=3.93, SD=1.99 vs. Mlower=4.81, SD=2.18, b=-.88, t(797)=-4.39, p < .001), but increases saving intentions when the ask is focused on prescriptive beliefs (e.g., how much should you save) (Mhigher=6.19, SD=2.08 vs. Mlower=5.06, SD=1.80, b=1.13, t(797)=5.63, p < .001).
Together, these studies identify income volatility as a causal antecedent to subjective wealth and consumers’ financial decisions. This paper has important implications for practitioners and policymakers hoping to drive consumers’ financial well-being.

Headshot of a smiling person with long blonde hair wearing a blazer over a dark top.

Alexis Gordon

Doctoral Candidate - OID

Abstract

Motivated Advice Seeking: Do People Ask for the Advice They Want to Hear?

We explore how people ask for advice and show that advice seekers often seek advice in a heavy-handed and motivated way. We find that, when asking for advice, people disproportionately provide reasons in favor of the option they prefer to choose and spend more time discussing why they should select that option. This approach may bias the advice they receive. We find evidence that advisors are able to accurately ascertain advice seekers’ preferences and tend to align their recommendations accordingly. Our findings suggest that advice-seeking in practice is likely characterized by substantial bias rather than reflecting an impartial, objective, and truth-seeking process (assumptions embedded in the classic advice-seeking paradigm).

A headshot of a person with shoulder-length brown hair and glasses, smiling and wearing a black blazer over a patterned top.

Shannon Duncan

Doctoral Candidate - MKTG

Abstract

The Making Up For Failure Nudge: Framing Subgoals as Opportunities for Redemption Increases Goal Persistence

Small failures during goal pursuit are inevitable and often derail consumers from reaching their overall goals. This research demonstrates one simple, cost-free nudge: encouraging consumers to make up for small failures. The making-up-for-failure nudge encourages more goal-consistent action today to make up failing to reach one’s goal yesterday. This leads consumers to perceive the day after a failure as an opportunity to redeem themselves, encoding missing such opportunity as two goal failures (both the past loss and the future loss), rather than one (just a future loss). As a result, consumers anticipate greater negative emotion about failing to miss their opportunity to redeem themselves than failing a subgoal itself. To avoid the heightened negative anticipated emotion of failing not one, but two, subgoals, consumers are motivated to engage in more goal-consistent behavior after failure. This effect is documented in two longitudinal real-behavior studies, four real-behavior lab studies, and three hypothetical studies across various domains (i.e., learning a new language, exercising, word search game). Three relevant boundary conditions are identified, including 1) how people feel after failure, 2) ease/difficulty of making up for failure, and 3) when people are encouraged to make up for their failure.

A person with long hair is smiling outdoors in an autumn setting, wearing a burgundy jacket and black top, with colorful leaves in the background.

Stephanie J. Yu

Doctoral Candidate - MGMT

Abstract

Growing Pains: How Learning-Prove Goals Help Employees Embrace Critical Feedback

Critical feedback is essential for workplace development, yet individuals often struggle to receive it constructively. While prior research suggests that learning goal orientations (i.e., the desire to learn by developing mastery) are superior to performance-prove goal orientations (i.e., the desire to appear competent to others) for processing negative feedback, we propose that a novel motivational approach—learning-prove goals (i.e., the desire to appear interested in learning and growing)—may be more effective. Situated between learning and performance-prove orientations, we theorize that learning-prove goals retain the growth focus of learning goals while incorporating the image-based concerns of performance goals. Unlike pure learning orientations, which require suppressing fundamental image concerns, learning-prove goals repurpose image-based concerns toward a more productive end, because in order to prove oneself, one must show a willingness to improve oneself. We integrate research on attribution theory and self-presentation to argue that individuals with learning-prove goals will show greater improvement after critical feedback compared to those with either performance-prove or learning goals. We propose this effect is mediated by decreased defensiveness and increased future focus. We tested our predictions with a lab experiment (N = 400). Our findings, which provide preliminary support for our hypotheses contribute to the literatures on achievement motivation, impression management, and feedback.

Headshot of a person wearing glasses, a scarf, and a coat, sitting indoors against a textured wall.

Jin Ho Yun

Postdoctoral Researcher of Neuroscience

Abstract

Quantifying TV Context-Advertising Congruence

Television advertising remains a cornerstone of marketing, yet mid-roll ads embedded during TV program breaks often face challenges such as viewer disengagement. We aim to quantify TV context-ad congruence—the cognitive and emotional alignment between TV shows and embedded ads—as a potential solution to enhance ad engagement. Using a multimodal approach, we adopt wearable EEG-based representational similarity analysis along with computational audiovisual models to measure context-ad congruence. A large-scale EEG study involving 145 participants revealed that greater neural similarity between TV contexts and ads predicts out of sample, viewers’ willingness to continue watching ads, even beyond audiovisual similarity measures. An online experiment further confirmed that congruent ads benefit from positive spillover effects of well-preferred TV contexts. By addressing the critical role of mental alignment in identifying the right “fit” between contexts and ads, our work provides actionable insights for advertisers and broadcasters to optimize ad placements amidst mounting viewer fatigue from ad overload.

A headshot of a person with long dark hair, wearing a gray top and black blazer, smiling outdoors with a blurred background of trees and buildings.

Sophia Pink

Doctoral Candidate - OID

Abstract

Do People Choose Choice Sets Wisely? Evidence That People Systematically Err Due to Myopic Thinking.

Our decisions about everything from who we’ll hire to what product we’ll purchase are often preceded by picking a choice set (e.g. choosing a recruiting website, a streaming service, a dating app, or a restaurant menu) from which our ultimate selection(s) will be plucked. Building on past research on stereotyping and limited forethought, we show that when making these types of decisions between choice sets, people consistently fail to optimize. They focus too much on the overall properties of the sets under consideration and devote insufficient attention to what they will later choose from the set. The specific bias we study in this paper is that people overlook their ability to cherry pick the best option(s) from selected choice sets (e.g., to hire just one candidate from an applicant pool; to order just one or two of the best dishes from a restaurant menu). This leads people to mistakenly select choice sets that have high average option quality, but lack the best overall option(s), causing them to miss out on the best outcomes — exhibiting what we call “cherry-picking neglect.” Across six pre-registered studies (N = 3,134), we show this bias arises in consumer and managerial decisions, for both real and hypothetical choices, and applies when people anticipate selecting either one or a small number of options from a final choice set. Moderation studies suggest that the effect is driven by both: (1) a failure to attend to the second stage of a two-stage decision process, and (2) a focus on average choice set quality in the first stage of a decision process. Broadly, our studies highlight how consequential a lack of forethought can be to decisions, particularly the common class of decisions that involves selecting a choice set.

A person smiling outdoors wearing a white shirt, standing in front of green foliage.

Jose Cervantez

Doctoral Candidate - OID

Abstract

Does Feedback Enhance Diversity in Selection Decisions?

We explore why certain descriptive feedback summarizing past choices prompts decision makers to
change their behavior, while other feedback does not. For example, learning that only 5% of your last 20
hires were women might prompt immediate action. However, discovering that just 5% of your recent
hires held advanced degrees might be less likely to provoke change. Why? We theorize and show that
descriptive feedback highlighting low selection rates of women or under-represented minorities (URMs)
triggers an impression management-driven motivation to respond without prejudice, resulting in increased
selection of members of these groups. Conversely, descriptive feedback about low selection rates of
members of other groups (e.g., those with specific job titles) doesn’t evoke impression management
concerns and has a smaller impact on future selections. We demonstrate these patterns across seven
pre-registered experiments, including one field experiment (N=6,302). We identify motivation to respond
without prejudice as a mediator of the effect of descriptive feedback on future selections of women and
URMs. Also, the composition of the candidate pool moderates the effect of descriptive feedback on past
selectees: feedback promotes increased selection of individuals from underrepresented groups. Notably,
our effects are 45-80% as large as imposing a quota requiring that at least one woman or URM be
included among selectees, highlighting that descriptive feedback powerfully moves behavior change. Our
work demonstrates when and why feedback can change behavior in the absence of explicit goals and
introduces an intervention to enhance organizational diversity.

Headshot of a person with curly hair, wearing glasses, smiling, with a blurred natural background.

Benjamin Lira Luttges

Doctoral Candidate - PSYCH

Abstract

Teaching by Example: Evidence that AI can Improve Writing Skill

Generative AI tools have been shown to boost productivity, but concerns persist regarding their long-term impact on human capital. One easily overlooked possibility is that, in fact, AI tools support skill development, by providing just-in-time, high-quality, personalized examples. In Study 1, forecasters predicted that practicing writing cover letters with an AI tool would impair learning compared to practicing alone. However, in Study 2, participants randomly assigned to practice writing with AI improved more on a writing test than those assigned to practice without AI (\textit{d} = .40***)—despite exerting less effort, whether measured by time on task, keystrokes, or subjective ratings. In Study 3, participants who practiced writing with AI again outperformed those who practiced without AI (\textit{d} = 31***), but no more than participants shown an AI-generated example of a cover letter that they could not edit (\textit{d} = 0.03, \textit{ns}). In both Studies 2 and 3, the benefits of practicing with AI persisted in a one-day follow-up writing test. Collectively, these findings constitute an existence proof that, contrary to intuition, using AI tools can improve, rather than undermine, learning.

Headshot of a person wearing glasses and a suit jacket over a white shirt, smiling with short hair, on a neutral background.

Max Gaerth

Postdoctoral Researcher of Marketing

Abstract

The Power of Touch and Voice: Understanding Consumer Attitudes Through Novel Implicit Measures

While marketing research has long relied on implicit measures, such as response time, to understand consumer behavior, traditional methods face significant limitations in real-world settings. To address these challenges, this project introduces two novel implicit measures: haptic responses and voice data collected during consumer interactions with technologies such touchscreens and smart speakers. We examine how patterns in haptic responses and voice data can predict consumer behavior, with a particular focus on their relationship to attitude strength.

A person is speaking in front of a screen, possibly giving a presentation. They are gesturing with their hands and appear engaged.

Zhiying (Bella) Ren

Doctoral Candidate - OID

Abstract

Agreement, Listening, and (the Lack of) Learning

It is important for people to feel listened to in professional and personal communications, and yet they can feel unheard even when others have listened well. We propose that this feeling may arise because speakers conflate agreement with listening quality. In 11 studies (N = 3,396 adults), we held constant or manipulated a listener’s objective listening behaviors, manipulating only after the conversation whether the listener agreed with the speaker. Across various topics, mediums (e.g., video, chat), and cues of objective listening quality, speakers consistently perceived disagreeing listeners as worse listeners. This effect persisted after controlling for other positive impressions of the listener (e.g., likability). This effect seemed to emerge because speakers believe their views are correct, leading them to infer that a disagreeing listener must not have been listening very well. Indeed, it may be prohibitively difficult for someone to simultaneously convey that they disagree and that they were listening.

Headshot of a person with long hair, wearing a dark top and a necklace, smiling against a dark, neutral background.

Feiyi Wang

Doctoral Candidate - PSYCH

Abstract

Illusions of Effective Discussion in Group Conversations and Advice-Taking

We examine when and how interacting groups who estimate unknown quantities believe that discussions improve their performance, even when there are no objective gains. It is well known that people exhibit intrapersonal overconfidence in their own abilities and skills. We show they are also overconfident in the benefits of group discussion. We call this the “illusion of effective discussion” and found that it is amplified when groups must reach census. The illusion is also likelier to occur when a person receives advice from group members who discuss and reach consensus, than when the advice comes from a single individual, multiple independent individuals, or individuals who discuss (without consensus). We highlight the conditions under which group discussions—usually believed to increase wisdom—can have detrimental effects.

Ashley Litwin

Doctoral Candidate - BEPP

Abstract

Gender Bias and Differential Belief Updating

I study whether people respond differently to identically informative signals about men and women. To ensure signals convey identical information, I develop a novel experimental design that fully fixes both prior beliefs and signal distributions across gender. In an experiment with 3,204 subjects, individuals respond dramatically to the gender of the signal-sender. Subjects are more likely to violate Bayes’ Rule — failing to update or updating in the wrong direction — after learning a woman succeeded or a man failed. They update more rationally after learning a man succeeded or a woman failed. Additional treatments explore how to mitigate these gendered mistakes.

A person with long brown hair smiling, wearing a black sleeveless top. The background is a brick wall. This is a headshot.

Becky Gilland

Doctoral Candidate - OID

Abstract

“I’m Sorry. That’s Too Low” or “Are You Fxxx Serious?”: 

How Reactions to First Offers Shape Economic and Relational Outcomes

Negotiations are an essential feature of both personal and professional interactions. While the core aspect of negotiations is the exchange of offers, we know surprisingly little about how these exchanges unfold. This research examines the impact of politeness and counteroffers in reaction to first offers. Across three studies, participants evaluated various responses in simulated negotiation scenarios. Treatment conditions varied the degree of politeness in the simulated responses, as well as whether or not a counteroffer was made, and how much this counteroffer was for. We find that polite responses enhance relational satisfaction and economic outcomes, while aggressive responses harm relationships and reduce favorable outcomes. Concrete counteroffers improve relational outcomes but may result in reduced economic gains if concessions are too steep. These findings underscore the importance of balancing assertiveness with relational considerations in negotiation strategies. They also expand on existing literature by emphasizing the importance of anchors in the exchange of offers.

Wharton Behavioral Lab
Steinberg Hall – Dietrich Hall
3620 Locust Walk
Suite 400
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Email: Wharton Behavioral Lab