About

Ayelet Fishbach, PhD, is the Jeffrey Breakenridge Keller Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She is an expert on motivation and decision making and the author of Get it Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Political Science
• Psychotherapist
• Epistemology
• Environmental health
• Applied psychology
• Developmental psychology
• Mathematics
• Nursing
• Medicine

Selected publications

• The downside of generosity: How rare giving fosters stronger social connection

  Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · 2026-03-20

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Giving serves not only to benefit others and society but also to foster social connections between givers and recipients. However, more giving is not necessarily merrier. This research finds that social connection depends not only on the act of giving but also on how many others receive the gesture from the same giver. Rare givers—those who give to fewer recipients—are perceived as more socially connected to each recipient than broad givers—those who give to many (the rare giving effect). This effect emerges across diverse contexts, including interpersonal gift exchanges in both new and existing relationships and corporate donations. As a result, rare givers enjoy a relational advantage: their gifts are valued more, and they are more likely to receive reciprocation (e.g., a gift in return or purchasing from the firm), even though they are perceived as less generous than broad givers. However, the negative effect of the number of recipients on perceived connection is attenuated when recipients are closely connected (e.g., donations to multiple charities supporting the same cause) or when gifts reinforce connections between recipients (e.g., friends sharing items in a matching set). These findings highlight an overlooked cost of broad generosity, with implications for managing interpersonal relationships and firms’ giving strategies.

  PublisherDOI

• Adherence to Personal Resolutions Across Time, Culture, and Goal Domains

  Psychological Science · 2025-07-15 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Goal setting is only somewhat more common than the failure to follow through on one's goals. Recognizing the challenge of long-term behavior change, we asked what best predicts long-term goal adherence: extrinsic motivation (the extent to which goal pursuit is experienced as a means to an end) or intrinsic motivation (the extent to which the same goal pursuit is experienced as an end in itself). In a year-long longitudinal study, U.S. adults set extrinsic New Year's resolutions, but intrinsic motivation predicted adherence to these goals more than extrinsic motivation (Study 1). These findings emerged among adults in China (Study 2) and when measuring goal adherence objectively using the number of steps U.S. adults walked over 2 weeks (Study 3). Understanding how intrinsic motivation affects long-term persistence critically informs interventions that promote goal pursuit. Indeed, increasing intrinsic (vs. extrinsic) motivation increased U.S. adults' goal adherence (Study 4). Overall, intrinsic motivation both predicted and causally increased goal adherence.

  PublisherDOI

• Beauty as a Goal: Creating Harmony Between Health and Taste

  Journal of Consumer Research · 2025-07-17

  articleSenior author

  Abstract People frequently perceive a trade-off between health and taste, leading to poor dietary choices. This research identifies a novel pathway to healthier eating: seeking beauty in food. Across seven preregistered field and lab studies, pursuing beautiful food systematically increased healthy choices without diminishing perceived taste. This effect arises because beauty is positively associated with both health and taste, effectively creating health–taste harmony instead of the commonly perceived conflict. Individuals who sought beauty in food consistently selected healthier options across diverse consumption contexts—including cafeteria meals, self-generated food ideas, grocery lists, and varied menus (with and without images)—and across populations, spanning both adults and children. Notably, the effect was stronger among individuals who more strongly associate beauty with health and weaker in choice sets in which the beauty–health association was less pronounced (e.g., morning cereals). These findings advance motivation theory by positioning beauty as a goal in itself, rather than merely a perceptual cue. We discuss theoretical and managerial implications for consumer behavior, food marketing, and public policy initiatives aimed at promoting healthier eating.

  PublisherDOI

• Learning from failure is like learning from unsolicited advice

  Current Opinion in Psychology · 2025-12-11

  review1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Goals and Motivation

  2025-05-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Why do people pursue the goals they pursue the way they pursue them? Why does one person adopt the goal to earn a graduate degree while another drops out of college? Why do some people dedicate their lives to fighting a social cause while others don’t bother to vote in a democratic election?

  PublisherDOI

• Author response for "Adherence to Personal Resolutions Across Time, Culture, and Goal Domains"

  2025-03-10

  peer-reviewSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The misalignment of incentives in academic publishing and implications for journal reform

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2025-01-27 · 39 citations

  articleOpen access

  For most researchers, academic publishing serves two goals that are often misaligned-knowledge dissemination and establishing scientific credentials. While both goals can encourage research with significant depth and scope, the latter can also pressure scholars to maximize publication metrics. Commercial publishing companies have capitalized on the centrality of publishing to the scientific enterprises of knowledge dissemination and academic recognition to extract large profits from academia by leveraging unpaid services from reviewers, creating financial barriers to research dissemination, and imposing substantial fees for open access. We present a set of perspectives exploring alternative models for communicating and disseminating scientific research. Acknowledging that the success of new publishing models depends on their impact on existing approaches for assigning academic credit that often prioritize prestigious publications and metrics such as citations and impact factors, we also provide various viewpoints on reforming academic evaluation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How can we make sound replication decisions?

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2025-01-27 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access

  Replication and the reported crises impacting many fields of research have become a focal point for the sciences. This has led to reforms in publishing, methodological design and reporting, and increased numbers of experimental replications coordinated across many laboratories. While replication is rightly considered an indispensable tool of science, financial resources and researchers' time are quite limited. In this perspective, we examine different values and attitudes that scientists can consider when deciding whether to replicate a finding and how. We offer a conceptual framework for assessing the usefulness of various replication tools, such as preregistration.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Reply to “A Tendency to Answer Consistently Can Generate Apparent Failures to Learn From Failure”

  Psychological Science · 2025-11-01

  articleSenior author

  In Eskreis-Winkler and Fishbach (2019), failure stymies learning: People learn less from failure than success. The commentary proposes that the failure to learn from failure could be due to a tendency to respond consistently. Although a consistent response pattern explains why people struggle to learn from failure in some paradigms, we argue that it does not explain the results of the original paradigm. Certain consistency mechanisms require that people assume they should be consistent with their initial intuition instead of updating as they learn new information. This assumption does not apply to the original paradigm. We discuss how the commentary helps sharpen the criteria for assessing learning from failure and the role of consistency as one potential barrier to learning.

  PublisherDOI

• Goal harmony.

  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · 2025-06-05 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author

  At times, goals seem to conflict, pulling people in opposite directions; at other times, they appear to complement or even facilitate one another, creating harmony. We propose and test a theoretical framework for understanding the antecedents and consequences of perceived goal harmony. We find that goal harmony can be enhanced through the cognitive process of mental integration, which includes identifying connections between goals (e.g., considering how holding a job supports parenting) and creating multifinal means (e.g., considering how a means to job success can also serve parenting). Additionally, goal harmony is acquired through social learning. People in five collectivistic countries reported greater goal harmony than those in five individualistic countries (e.g., more harmony in India and China than in the Netherlands and the United States), and men reported more harmony between their work and family goals than women. We further find that goal harmony predicts and causally increases motivation and well-being. Interventions designed to promote goal harmony enhanced prosocial behaviors and encouraged healthier eating habits. Further, individuals who perceived greater goal harmony were more likely to stick to their New Year's resolutions over a 2-month period. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Kaitlin Woolley

  SC Johnson (United States)

  31 shared

• Minjung Koo

  17 shared

• Arie W. Kruglanski

  16 shared

• Lauren Eskreis-Winkler

  Kellogg's (Canada)

  15 shared

• Yanping Tu

  14 shared

• Franklin Shaddy

  University of California, Los Angeles

  14 shared

• Stacey R. Finkelstein

  Stony Brook University

  12 shared

• Maferima Touré‐Tillery

  12 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Marketing

  University of Chicago

  1996

• M.A., Psychology

  University of Chicago

  1992

• B.A., Psychology

  Tel Aviv University

  1989

Awards & honors

• Society of Experimental Social Psychology's Best Dissertatio…
• Society of Experimental Social Psychology's Career Trajector…
• Fulbright Educational Foundation Award
• Provost's Teaching Award from the University of Chicago