On Amir
· Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research, Professor of MarketingVerifiedUniversity of California, San Diego · Behavioral Science
Active 2002–2025
About
On Amir is the Wolfe Family Presidential Endowed Chair in Life Sciences Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research, and a Professor of Marketing at UC San Diego. His research focuses on using psychological and economic principles to identify successful strategies in various market settings. He investigates customer decision-making mechanisms and their influences on pricing, promotion strategies, decision making under risk and uncertainty, and preference dynamics. Amir explores how insights from behavioral economics and decision-making research can be applied to improve business practices and policy making. Prior to his current position, Amir was an assistant professor of marketing at Yale University. He earned his Ph.D. in management science and marketing from MIT's Sloan School of Management in 2003. His work has been recognized with several research awards from the Marketing Science Institute and the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, reflecting his significant contributions to the fields of marketing, behavioral economics, and consumer decision-making.
Research topics
- Psychology
- Social psychology
- Computer Science
- Artificial Intelligence
- Pedagogy
- Data science
- Epistemology
- Acoustics
- Communication
Selected publications
Mind the Gap: How Explicit Uncertainty Cues Improve Decision Making
SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01
preprintOpen accessSenior authorSSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01
preprintOpen accessSenior authorHOW CALLS TO ACTION LEAD TO ASYMMETRIC CONSIDERATION OF ACTION VERSUS NON-ACTION ALTERNATIVES
SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01
preprintOpen accessSenior authorThe evolving field of consumer research through the lens of its top journals
Marketing Letters · 2024-05-29 · 1 citations
articleThe entrenchment effect: Why people persist with less-preferred behaviors
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · 2023-09-01 · 3 citations
articleOpen accessCan Recalling the 10 Commandments Serve as Honesty Intervention? An Update on the Scientific Debate
SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01
articleOpen accessSSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01
articleOpen accessJournal of Consumer Research · 2023-09-26 · 5 citations
articleAbstract In real-world marketplaces, one may encounter an alternative that is inferior to another one in the assortment. While the presence of such seemingly irrelevant inferior alternatives should ostensibly have no influence on consumers’ decisions, an extensive literature using stylized lab experiments has found that, surprisingly, their presence matters. Specifically, the dominance effect suggests that the presence of an inferior alternative shifts consumer’s preferences toward the alternative made to be superior. However, null results in some recent lab studies and a lack of real-world evidence call into question whether, when, and how the effect exists. In this work, we find clear evidence that dominance matters in the wild. We also identify an important moderator for the dominance effect—preference uncertainty—and test it in both a real-world marketplace for digital freelance services and a lab experiment. Further, we find evidence for additional moderators that help explain how the effect works, including the count of dominated alternatives and the magnitude of dominance, consistent with a perceptual mechanism. This work is the first to use consequential field data to shed light on when and why the dominance effects occur, with implications for marketers, choice architects, user interface designers, and policymakers.
A voice inside my head: The psychological and behavioral consequences of auditory technologies
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · 2022 · 19 citations
Senior authorCorresponding- Psychology
- Communication
- Acoustics
Preventive Medicine Reports · 2022-11-21 · 7 citations
articleOpen accessThis study examined the relation between cardiorespiratory fitness (fitness) and depression symptoms prior to and during COVID-19 among adults seeking preventive medical care. Participants consisted of 967 patients attending the Cooper Clinic (Dallas, TX) pre-pandemic (March 2018-December 2019) and during the pandemic (March-December 2020). The outcome, depression symptoms, was based on the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression (CES-D). Maximal metabolic equivalents task (MET) levels for fitness were determined from the final treadmill speed and grade. Multiple linear regression models were computed by sex. Analysis revealed that mean fitness decreased from 11.4 METs (SD = 2.1) prior to the pandemic to 10.9 METs (SD = 2.3) during the pandemic (p-value < 0.001). The mean CES-D score increased from 2.8 (SD = 3.1) before to pandemic to 3.1 (SD = 3.2) during the pandemic (p-value = 0.003). Results from multiple linear regression indicate that increased fitness was associated with a statistically significant decrease in depression scores in men (-0.17 per MET; 95% CI -0.33, -0.02) but not women. This modest decrease may have been tempered by high fitness levels and low depression scores at baseline in this well-educated sample.
Frequent coauthors
- 23 shared
Dan Ariely
Duke University
- 14 shared
Nina Mažar
- 14 shared
Kristen Duke
University of Toronto
- 12 shared
Orly Lobel
University of San Diego
- 11 shared
Coby Morvinski
- 10 shared
Wendy Liu
University of Kentucky
- 9 shared
Alicea Lieberman
University of California, Los Angeles
- 9 shared
Kelly Goldsmith
Labs
Awards & honors
- Research awards from the Marketing Science Institute
- Research awards from the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation
- Resume-aware match score
- Save to shortlist
- AI-drafted outreach
See your match with On Amir
PhdFit ranks faculty by your research interests, methods, and publications — grounded in their actual work, not templates.
- Free to start
- No credit card
- 30-second signup