About

Norbert Schwarz is a provost professor of psychology and marketing at the USC Marshall School of Business. He is an expert in consumer judgment and decision making, investigating how subtle contextual influences shape perceptions and behaviors. His research explores the downstream consequences of these influences on consumer behavior, health behavior, and political preferences. Schwarz has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the German National Academy of Science, and the Academia Europaea, a pan-European academy of arts and sciences. He serves on the editorial boards of leading journals in marketing, psychology, and social sciences. Prior to his current position at USC, he was the Charles Horton Cooley Collegiate Professor of psychology, business, and social research at the University of Michigan.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Mathematics education
• Social psychology
• Epistemology

Selected publications

• Does Authenticity Matter in Humor Appreciation?

  2025-07-22

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Does authenticity matter in a domain where one’s words and persona aren’t meant to be taken at face value? People often say “I’m just joking” to mean “Don’t take my words or actions literally.” To date, little is known about the role of authenticity in humor appreciation. To explore this question, we used audio recordings of comedic stories told by standup comedians (Experiments 1-3), text-only comedic stories (Experiment 4), and text-only observational jokes (Experiment 5) as comedic materials. We manipulated perceptions of authenticity by alleging the comedian prioritizes authentic self-expression (vs. pleasing their audience) (Experiment 1), performs because they love performing (vs. for fame and money) (Experiment 2), tells jokes that are based on real, personal (vs. fictional, imagined) experiences (Experiment 3), or wrote their own jokes (vs. used another human writer or AI) (Experiments 4-5). Across all studies, people evaluated the allegedly authentic jokes as funnier and expressed greater interest in following or sharing the comedian’s work.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Can a noisy venue be bad for comedy?

  PLoS ONE · 2025-09-19

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  People hear jokes live and pre-recorded in a variety of settings, from comedy clubs, bars, outdoor venues, cafes, to their own home or car. While a lot of research has analyzed the significance of the content of jokes, we know less about the significance of the setting one hears them in. Some settings can have interfering background noise or poor acoustics, reducing an audience's ease of processing heard jokes. Would this affect how funny the jokes seem? Two experiments with audio clips of stand-up comedy performances show that participants found jokes less funny when background noise interfered with their listening.

  PublisherDOI

• “Consistent with views of a climate skeptic”: Counterattitudinal alignment salience protects against illusory truth.

  Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition · 2025-09-11

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• How funny is ChatGPT? A comparison of human- and A.I.-produced jokes

  2025-01-31 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Can a large language model produce humor? Past research has focused on finding examples of these models succeeding or failing at producing humor in the eyes of the authors, without surveying peoples’ actual judgments of its output. These examples, while interesting, do not shed light on exactly how funny ChatGPT is to the general public, nor do they analyze ChatGPT’s humor production abilities in comparison to humans’ abilities. To explore this question, we gave the same comedic prompts to ChatGPT 3.5 and laypeople, and asked them to generate humorous responses (Study 1). We also asked ChatGPT 3.5 to generate humorous satirical headlines and compared them to published examples from professional comedy writers at The Onion (Study 2). Other participants rated the funniness of the human and A.I.-produced responses in each study. ChatGPT 3.5-produced jokes were rated as equally funny or funnier than human-generated responses regardless of the comedic task and the expertise of the human comedy writer.

  PublisherDOI

• Does Authenticity Matter in Humor Appreciation?

  2025-07-09

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Does authenticity matter in a domain where one’s words and persona aren’t meant to be taken at face value? People often say “I’m just joking” to mean “Don’t take my words or actions literally.” To date, little is known about the role of authenticity in humor appreciation. To explore this question, we used audio recordings of comedic stories told by standup comedians (Experiments 1-3), text-only comedic stories (Experiment 4), and text-only observational jokes (Experiment 5) as comedic materials. We manipulated perceptions of authenticity by alleging the comedian prioritizes authentic self-expression (vs. pleasing their audience) (Experiment 1), performs because they love performing (vs. for fame and money) (Experiment 2), tells jokes that are based on real, personal (vs. fictional, imagined) experiences (Experiment 3), or wrote their own jokes (vs. used another human writer or AI) (Experiments 4-5). Across all studies, people evaluated the allegedly authentic jokes as funnier and expressed greater interest in following or sharing the comedian’s work.

  PublisherDOI

• Quantum stochastic resonance in a single-photon emitter

  Communications Physics · 2025-10-14

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Stochastic resonance is a phenomenon in which fluctuations enhance an otherwise weak signal. It has been found in many different systems in paleoclimatology, biology, medicine, and physics. The classical stochastic resonance due to thermal noise has recently been experimentally extended to the quantum regime, where the fundamental randomness of individual quantum events provides the noise source. Here, we demonstrate quantum stochastic resonance in the single-electron tunneling dynamics of a periodically driven single-photon emitter, consisting of a self-assembled quantum dot that is tunnel-coupled to an electron reservoir. Such highly-controllable quantum emitters are promising candidates for future applications in quantum information technologies. We monitor the charge dynamics by resonant optical excitation and identify quantum stochastic resonance with the help of full counting statistics of tunneling events in terms of the Fano factor and extend the statistical evaluation to factorial cumulants to gain a deeper understanding of this far-reaching phenomenon.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Kahneman in quotes and reflections

  2024-06-07

  preprintOpen access

  In this retrospective honoring the exemplary psychologist Daniel Kahneman (1934 - 2024), we present a curated selection of quotes from the academic community reflecting on his ideas. These submissions, gathered from a wide range of scholars, highlight Kahneman's contributions to fields spanning attention, judgment, decision-making, and well-being. From his exploration of cognitive biases to his ground breaking work on prospect theory, Kahneman's research revolutionized our understanding of human behavior and decision-making. Beyond his research, many of the quotes also emphasize Kahneman’s thoughts on what it means to be a behavioral scientist — focusing on a commitment to criticism, transparency, and adversarial collaboration; showcasing the dynamic nature of scientific inquiry across disciplinary divides; and highlighting his dedication to advancing the greater good. Together, these reflections paint a portrait of a visionary thinker whose theoretical and meta-scientific contributions have left an indelible mark on psychology and other social sciences.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Health Communication and Behavioral Change During the COVID-19 Pandemic

  Perspectives on Psychological Science · 2024-02-06 · 19 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The COVID-19 pandemic challenged the public health system to respond to an emerging, difficult-to-understand pathogen through demanding behaviors, including staying at home, masking for long periods, and vaccinating multiple times. We discuss key challenges of the pandemic health communication efforts deployed in the United States from 2020 to 2022 and identify research priorities. One priority is communicating about uncertainty in ways that prepare the public for disagreement and likely changes in recommendations as scientific understanding advances: How can changes in understanding and recommendations foster a sense that "science works as intended" rather than "the experts are clueless" and prevent creating a void to be filled by misinformation? A second priority concerns creating a culturally fluent framework for asking people to engage in difficult and novel actions: How can health messages foster the perception that difficulties of behavior change signal that the change is important rather than that the change "is not for people like me?" A third priority entails a shift from communication strategies that focus on knowledge and attitudes to interventions that focus on norms, policy, communication about policy, and channel factors that impair behavior change: How can we move beyond educating and correcting misinformation to achieving desired actions?

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How funny is ChatGPT? A comparison of human- and A.I.-produced jokes

  PLoS ONE · 2024-07-03 · 18 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Can a large language model produce humor? Past research has focused on anecdotal examples of large language models succeeding or failing at producing humor. These examples, while interesting, do not examine ChatGPT's humor production abilities in ways comparable to humans' abilities, nor do they shed light on how funny ChatGPT is to the general public. To provide a systematic test, we asked ChatGPT 3.5 and laypeople to respond to the same humor prompts (Study 1). We also asked ChatGPT 3.5 to generate humorous satirical headlines in the style of The Onion and compared them to published headlines of the satirical magazine, written by professional comedy writers (Study 2). In both studies, human participants rated the funniness of the human and A.I.-produced responses without being aware of their source. ChatGPT 3.5-produced jokes were rated as equally funny or funnier than human-produced jokes regardless of the comedic task and the expertise of the human comedy writer.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How funny is ChatGPT? A comparison of human- and A.I.-produced jokes

  2024-02-05 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Can a large language model produce humor? Past research has focused on finding examples of these models succeeding or failing at producing humor in the eyes of the authors, without surveying peoples’ actual judgments of its output. These examples, while interesting, do not shed light on exactly how funny ChatGPT is to the general public, nor do they analyze ChatGPT’s humor production abilities in comparison to humans’ abilities. To explore this question, we gave the same comedic prompts to ChatGPT 3.5 and laypeople, and asked them to generate humorous responses (Study 1). We also asked ChatGPT 3.5 to generate humorous satirical headlines and compared them to published examples from professional comedy writers at The Onion (Study 2). Other participants rated the funniness of the human and A.I.-produced responses in each study. ChatGPT 3.5-produced jokes were rated as equally funny or funnier than human-generated responses regardless of the comedic task and the expertise of the human comedy writer.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant P50AG011715

  NIH · $7.9M · 2003

Frequent coauthors

• Herbert Bless

  University of Mannheim

  64 shared

• Daniel Kahneman

  Princeton University

  61 shared

• Fritz Strack

  University of Würzburg

  56 shared

• Alan B. Krueger

  Agricultural Research Service

  55 shared

• David Schkade

  University of California, San Diego

  50 shared

• Arthur A. Stone

  University of Southern California

  48 shared

• Bärbel Knaüper

  McGill University

  29 shared

• Martin Thurnher

  Universität Innsbruck

  26 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Psychology

  University of Michigan

Awards & honors

• Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Elected to the German National Academy of Science
• Elected to the Academia Europaea (pan-European academy of ar…