Leif Nelson
Ewald T. Grether Professor in Business Administration & Marketing | Barbara and Gerson Bakar Faculty Fellow | Distinguished Teaching Fellow | Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA, UNITED STATES
Areas of Expertise (5)
Consumer Well Being
Consumer Preferences and Choices
Human Judgment
Decision Making
Consumption Experience
Education (3)
Princeton University: PhD, Psychology
Princeton University: MA, Psychology
Stanford University: BA, Psychology
Links (3)
Honors & Awards (6)
Garwood Center Grant for Corporate Innovation
2013
Cheit Outstanding Teaching Award
2013 – 2014
Journal of Consumer Research Best Paper Award
2012
Cialdini Award
Best paper with field experimentation in social psychology 2011
MSI Young Scholars
Marketing Science Institute
Scholar at Center for Advanced Study in Behavorial Science
Summer Institute
Positions Held (1)
At Haas since 2009
2014 – present, Ewald T. Grether Professor of Business Administration and Marketing, Univeresity of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business 2010 – 2014, Associate Professor of Marketing, University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business 2009 – 2010, Assistant Professor, University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business 2007 – 2009, Assistant Professor, University of California, San Diego, Rady School of Management 2003 – 2007, Assistant Professor of Marketing, New York University, Stern School of Business
Media Appearances (7)
Sportsbooks Made a Killing on NFL Games in November
Poker News Daily online
2021-11-30
“When people decide how to bet on a game, first they identify who is going to win,” Leif Nelson, associate professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley told Silver. He found that the average share of money bet on the favorite was 65%.”
An Empirical Audit
The Last Word On Nothing online
2021-11-17
Leif Nelson, the Ewald T. Grether Professor in Business Administration & Marketing, and Prof. Don Moore, the Lorraine Tyson Mitchell Chair in Leadership and Communication, asked PhD students to audit research about scarcity mindset to determine if it's well-supported by evidence. Scarcity mindset is the idea that poverty alters how people allocate their attention, making them worse at certain kinds of decision-making. Just four of the 20 studies the students tried to replicate worked out.
How data detectives spotted fake numbers in a widely cited paper
The Economist online
2021-08-27
A widely-cited paper, based on insurance company data on reported car mileage, concluded that people act more honestly when they state in advance that they will be truthful. But Leif Nelson, the Ewald T. Grether Professor in Business Administration & Marketing, along with two colleagues who run the Data Colada blog, discovered that the paper is based on clumsily faked data. The first clue was that the falsified data appeared in a different font. The papers' authors all deny responsibility, saying that they were duped rather than dishonest, and have asked for it to be retracted.
This Cornell food researcher has had 13 papers retracted. How were they published in the first place?
Mother Jones online
2018-09-25
Leif Nelson, Ewald T. Grether Professor in Business Administration & Marketing, said peer reviewers are just beginning to catch on to known research problems. “Perhaps it is like recognizing a secret handshake,” he said. “Before you learned it, you never would have even noticed it, but after you learn it, you will never miss it.”
2018 best 40 under 40 professors: Jeff Galak, Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper)
Poets & Quants online
2018-04-23
Jeff Galak said the professor he most admires is Leif Nelson, Ewald T. Grether Professor in Business Administration & Marketing. Nelson previously taught at New York University's Stern School of Business, where Galak earned his PhD.
Daryl Bem Proved ESP Is Real
Slate online
2017-05-17
It seemed obvious, at first, that Jade Wu was getting punked. In the fall of 2009, the Cornell University undergraduate had come across a posting for a job in the lab of one of the world’s best-known social psychologists. A short while later, she found herself in a conference room, seated alongside several other undergraduate women. “Have you guys heard of extrasensory perception?” Daryl Bem asked the students. They shook their heads.
Five Senior Bowl performances for Broncos fans to note
247 Sports online
2016-01-28
The Senior Bowl wrapped up Saturday and there were several performances that stood out. Hit the ?? to see which names Broncos fans should remember for when the 2018 NFL Draft rolls around.
Selected Papers & Publications (5)
People Can Recognize, Learn, and Apply Defaults in Social Influence
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Minah H. Jung, Chengyao Sun, and Leif D. Nelson
2018
Psychology's Renaissance
Annual Review of Psychology
Leif D Nelson, Joseph Simmons, Uri Simonsohn
2018
The Category Size Bias: A Mere Misunderstanding
Judgment & Decision Making
Hannah Perfecto, Leif D Nelson, Don A Moore
2018
Registered Replication Report: Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg (1998)
Perspectives on Psychological Science
O’Donnell, M., Nelson, L. D., Ackermann, E., Aczel, B., Akhtar, A., Aldrovandi, S., … & Balatekin, N
2018
Rejecting a Bad Option Feels Like Choosing a Good One
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Hannah Perfecto, Jeff Galak, Joseph P Simmons, Leif D Nelson
2017
Teaching (1)
Courses
Marketing Research