Hi! This is my website. I received my PhD in Marketing from the University of Ghent (Belgium) in June 2018. I am assistant professor at the Geneva School of Economics and Management, at the University of Geneva (Switzerland).
(this is me)
My PsyArxiv page.
My ResearchGate.
My OSF page for some pre-prints and presentations about open science.
Here is my CV (the most up-to-date document for ongoing projects). You can also find up-to-date links to my preprints and papers on my CV.
My research interests.
I am a consumer psychologist. I typically draw from research in the judgment and decision-making and social psychology area.
I am generally interested in what people think of other people. I am looking at it from different points of view, to describe and explain lay psychological theories that people have about other consumers and other people. This has practical implications for when we, for example, have to make decisions for others, negotiate, or buy gifts.
Lately, I have started a few projects about consumer lay theories of others: what do we think of other consumption patterns? Daniel Villanova and me figured out that people think that others use the same products more often than they do. I think there are a lot of areas in which this independent variable can be applied within consumer research, so I am starting up a few projects in this overall area. With Evan Polman, Kaiyang Wu, and Anneleen van Kerckhove, we found that people believe that products are more effective for others – even when others are very similar to them. This paper has recently been published in Journal of Consumer Research and covered in the Wall Street Journal.
With my former advisor, Mario Pandelaere, we found that people believe that actions closer to a sequence are more likely to impact the overall outcome (think of a buzzer-beater if you know basketball). This paper has recently been published in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
With Adam Wang, we found that slower responses are perceived as less sincere, because people think slower responses imply the suppression of a spontaneous thought (this paper has recently been published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and has received quite a lot of media coverage, for instance in the Guardian, Daily Mail, Die Welt, Yahoo India).
Having started my PhD in 2014, I am a son of the replication crisis. I think everyone should be involved in solving replication crisis in some way. I am writing up some replications with data collected by Gilad Feldman (mgto.org) and conducting my own replications with Master’s and PhD students within the consumer behavior literature. Check Aaron Charlton’s excellent website to track replications and retractions in the marketing literature.
This shapes my teaching, too. I taught Marketing Research and Consumer Behavior. In both of these classes, I introduced students to the replication crises; to error detection tools, such as GRIM, GRIMMER, and statcheck; to the newest replicable literature on the subject matter, and to the appropriate software to do as much (not just SPSS, but also jamovi, R, and G*power). In the Marketing Research class, students had to design a replication of a finding in the marketing literature, and then analyze it and write it up using randomly-generated data.
In Geneva, I will teach Consumer Behavior and Sustainable Behavioral Science.
In general, I am concerned with the state of academia, which reproduces many of the class, gender, and racial divides of the outside world. This has very real human consequences. For instance, did you know that PhD students in Flanders have roughly double the chance of mental health issues compared to people with similar education? And did you know that 11% of Economics PhD students in the USA have suicidal ideation? This are problems that need to be recognized and tackled.
Anyway, if you want to collaborate with me or argue online, please email me (see above).
My published and working papers, with links to the ungated version. Again, see my CV which I obsessively update
2023
“More Useful to You: Believing that Objects are More Useful to Others”, with Daniel Villanova.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Preprint.
2022
- “In COVID-19 health messaging, loss framing increases anxiety with little-to-no concomitant benefits: Experimental evidence from 84 countries”, with the Psychological Science Accelerator.
Affective Science. Preprint. - “A global experiment on motivating social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic”, with the Psychological Science Accelerator. PNAS. Paper.
- “Using Self-Generated Priors in Division Leads to Biased Consumer Judgments”, with Daniel Villanova. Journal of Economic Psychology. Preprint
- “No reason to expect large and consistent effects of nudge interventions”, with Szaszi, B., Higney, A., Charlton, A., Gelman, A.., Aczel, B., Goldstein, D. G., Yeager, D. S., Tipton, E.. PNAS (Letter). Preprint. Media coverage: The Economist.
- “Faster Responders are Perceived as More Extroverted”. With Deming Wang. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Preprint. Media coverage: Psychology Today, PsyPost, List23, NPlus.
- “People weigh Salaries More than Ratios in Judgments of Income Inequality, Fairness, and Demands for Redistribution”, with Mario Pandelaere and Christophe Lembregts.
Journal of Economic Psychology. Preprint. - “Replication of the Temporal Value Asymmetry effect found in Caruso et al. (2008) and Caruso (2010)”. With Burak Tunca, Gilad Feldman, Malak El Halabi and others.
Journal of Economic Psychology. Preprint. - “Late-action effect: Heightened counterfactual potency and perceived outcome reversibility make actions closer to a definitive outcome seem more causally impactful”, with Mario Pandelaere.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Preprint.
2021
“Numbing or Sensitization? Replications and Extensions of Fetherstonhaugh et al. (1997)’s “Insensitivity to the Value of Human Life”” With Qinyu Xiao, Siu Kit Yeung, and Gilad Feldman. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Preprint.
“Consumers Believe that Products Work Better for others”, with Anneleen van Kerckhove, Evan Polman, and Kaiyang Wu (2021). Journal of Consumer Research. Preprint.
Media coverage: Psychology Today, Wall Street Journal
“A global test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic”, with the Psychological Science Accelerator (2021).
Nature: Human Behavior (IF 13.66). Preprint
“Loudness Perceptions Influence Feelings of Interpersonal Closeness and Protect Against Detrimental Psychological Effects of Social Exclusion”, with Deming Wang, Martin Hagger, and Nikos Chatzisarantis (2021). Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Preprint.
Media coverage: WENY, IBT, NY News.
“Replication of Dubois et al. (2012), Super Size Me”. With Burak Tunca and Wenting Xu.
In press at Meta-Psychology. Preprint.
“Revisiting “Money Illusion”: Replication and Extension of Shafir et al. (1997)”, with Jie Li, Shue Man Tsun, Hoi Ching Lei, Anvita Anil Kamath, Bo Ley Cheng, and Gilad Feldman (2021).
Journal of Economic Psychology. Preprint.
“Slow Lies: Response Delays Promote Perceptions of Insincerity ”, with Deming Wang (2021).
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Preprint.
Media coverage: the Guardian, Daily Mail, Die Welt, Yahoo India, Forbes, Radio New Zealand.
“Revisiting Disjunction Effect: Replication of Tversky and Shafir (1992) and extension comparing between and within subject designs” with Man Fai Kong, Hong Joo Kim, Chit Yu Liu, Sze Chai Wong, Bo Ley Cheng, and Gilad Feldman (2021).
Journal of Economic Psychology. Preprint.
2020
“Creative destruction in science.” Tierney, W., Hardy, J. H., III., Ebersole, C., Leavitt, K., Viganola, D., Clemente, E., Gordon, M., Dreber, A.A., Johannesson, M., Pfeiffer, T., Hiring Decisions Forecasting Collaboration, & Uhlmann, E.L. (2020).
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. (Member of Forecasting Collaboration).
“Replication and extension of Alicke (1985) Better-than-Average Effects for Desirable and Controllable traits”, with Gilad Feldman and Cora Mok (2020).
Social Psychological and Personality Science. Preprint. Media coverage: Psychology Today.
“Impact of ownership on liking and value: Replications and extensions of three ownership effect experiments”, with Donna Yao, Yajing Gao, and Gilad Feldman (2020).
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Preprint.
“Perceived morality of direct versus indirect harm: Replications of the preference for indirect harm effect”, with Gilad Feldman, Boley Cheng, and Cedar Chan (2020).
Meta-Psychology. Preprint.
2018
- “The majority premium: Competence inferences derived from majority consumption”, with Mario Pandelaere (2018). Journal of Business Research. Preprint.
- “Justify Your Alpha: A Response to Redefine Statistical Significance”, with Daniel Lakens and 86 further authors (2018). Nature Human Behavior. Preprint. Press coverage: nature.com.
Working papers
- “Consequences of Worker Salary Information”, with Birga M. Schumpe. Under review at JPSP. Preprint.
- “Choosing more food for others” with Peggy Liu and Theresa Kwon. Revise and resubmit at Journal of Consumer Research. Preprint.
- “Revisiting The Effort Heuristic”, with Gilad Feldman, Siu Kit Yeung, Cheong Shing Lee, and Jiaxin Shi. Revise and resubmit at Collabra:Psychology. Preprint.
- “Response Ambiguity Diminishes Likeability” with Deming Wang. Under review at PSPB. Preprint.
- ”Westerners Underestimate Global Inequality” with Ivy Onyeador. Targeted at Nature Human Behavior. Preprint.
- ”Prototypes of the ostracized”, with Deming Wang. Under review at JEP:G. Preprint.
- ”Prototypes of depressed people”. With Yasin Koc. R&R at Psychological Science. Preprint.
- “ Prototypes of workplace harassment victims” with Evan Polman. Under review at JPSP. Preprint.
- “Consumers Prefer and Choose Products Made by Satisfied Workers” with Birga Schumpe. Under review at JCP. Preprint.
- “Unsuccessful Replication and Extension of Kogut and Ritov (2005a) Identified Victim Effect”, with Rajarshi Majumder, Gilad Feldman and Yik Long (Caleb) Tai. R&R at JDM. Preprint.
- “A Social Perception Theory of the Endowment Effect”, with Daniel Villanova. Preprint.
- “People Believe They Social Distance More Than Others Do”, with Malak el-Halabi. Preprint.
- “More Work Makes Sadder Songs: Consumers’ Inferences of Product Mood from Product Effort”. Revise and resubmit at Psychology & Marketing. Preprint.
Ignazio Ziano 