Uri
Simonsohn
Associate Professor
OPIM - The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania
uws@wharton.upenn.edu
Huntsman
Hall 548
3730
Walnut Street
Philadelphia,
PA19104
last update: 2012 05 22
Vita
Power point slides
Daily
Horizons (formerly: The
interviewer
fallacy)
Spurious?
Name
Similarity
Effects
(Implicit
Egotism) in Marriage, Job, and Moving
Decisions
Round
Numbers as Goals: Evidence from the SAT, Baseball and the Lab
Lessons from an Oops at Consumer
Reports:
Consumer Follow Experts; Ignore Invalid Information
Publications
Simonsohn
U, Gino, F. (in press) "Daily
Horizons: Evidence of Narrow Bracketing in Judgment from 10 years of
MBA-admission Interviews", Psychological
Science
Simmons
J.,
Nelson L., Simonsohn U. (2011)
"False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed
Flexibility in Data Collection
and Analysis Allow Presenting Anything as Significant", Psychological Science, V22(11),
pp.1359-1366 (SSRN)
Logical
argument,
experimental
demonstration,
and
simulations showing that if a
set of disclosure requirements we propose are not followed, results in
experiments are uninterpretable.
Saiz, A. & Simonsohn U. (in press)
"Proxying
for
Unobservable
Variables with
Internet Document Frequency", Journal
of
the
European
Economic
Association
Frequency
of
Internet
documents
about
X
proxies
for
frequency
of
X;
using
insight
we
replicate
published
studies
predicting
corruption.
Simonsohn
U.
(2011) "Spurious Also? Name Similarity Effects (Implicit
Egotism) in
Employer
Decisions," Psychological
Science, V22(8),
pp.1087-1089 (SSRN)
People
disproportionately
work
for
companies
with
which
they
share
an
initial.
Probably
a
spurious
correlation.
Simonsohn
U.
(2011)
"Spurious?
Name
Similarity
Effects
(Implicit
Egotism)
in
Marriage,
Job,
and
Moving
Decisions", Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, V101(1) pp.1-24 (SSRN)
Three
JPSP
papers
find
that
people
disproportionately
choose
spouses,
places
to
live
and
occupations
with
names
similar to their own. Analyzing the same and additional data I
find that the existing evidence is spurious.
note: Pelham and Carvallo wrote a
rebuttal to this paper. Here is
my 5-page rejoinder titled "In
Defense of Diligence".
Pope D., Simonsohn U. (2011)
"Round Numbers as Goals: Evidence from Baseball, SAT Takers, and the
Lab", Psychological Science, January, V22(1), p.71-79 (.pdf)
When performance is measured
numerically, round numbers become implicit goals that strongly
influence behavior around them.
Simonsohn U. (2011) "Lessons from an Oops at Consumer Reports:
Consumer Follow Experts; Ignore Invalid Information", Journal of Marketing Research,
February V48(1) p.1-12 (.pdf)
Consumer Reports released & then
retracted info on carseat safety. Surprisingly, people successfully
ignored the retracted information.
Simonsohn, U. (2010) "eBay's
Crowded Evenings: Competition Neglect in Market Entry Decisions", Management Science, V56(7),
p.1060-1073 (.pdf)
Too
many sellers end their auctions at
peak time, so they lose money.
Simonsohn, U. (2010) "Weather to Go to College", Economic Journal (.pdf)
More prospective college students enroll
if they visit campus on cloudy day.
Simonsohn, U. (2009)
"Direct-Risk-Aversion: Evidence from Risky Prospects Valued Below Their
Worst Outcome" Psychological Science,
V20(6)
p.686-692
(.pdf)
People value lotteries less than their
worst outcome due to uncertainty; not confusion or "joint-evaluation."
Small, D. & Simonsohn U.
(2008) "Friends of Victims: Personal Experience and Prosocial
Behavior." Journal of Consumer
Research, V.35 p.532-542 (.pdf)
Donors give more to charities helping
the misfortune of someone they know.
Simonsohn, U. & Ariely D.
(2008) "When Rational Sellers Face Non-Rational Consumers: Evidence
from Herding on eBay," Management
Science V54(9) p.1624-1637 (.pdf)
eBay bidders choose auctions with more
bids, so sellers start them cheap.
Simonsohn, U., Karlsson, N.,
Loewenstein, G. and Ariely, D. (2008) "The Tree of Experience in the
Forest of Information: Overweighing Experienced Relative to Observed
Information" Games and Economic
Behavior, 62, pp. 263-286 (.pdf)
People respond more to information that
affected them directly.
Simonsohn, U. (2007) "Clouds
Make
Nerds Look Good: Field Evidence of the Influence of Incidental Factors
on Decision Making", Journal of
Behavioral Decision Making, 20(2) p.143-152 (.pdf)
College applicants' academic attributes
are weighted more if evaluated on cloudy days.
Simonsohn, U. & Loewenstein
G.
(2006) "Mistake #37: The Impact of Previously Faced Prices on Housing
Demand," Economic Journal,
116(1) pp.175-199 (.pdf)
Movers from more expensive cities rent
more expensive apartments, at first.
Simonsohn, U. (2006)
"New-Yorkers
Commute More Everywhere: Contrast Effects in the Field," Review of Economics and Statistics,
88(1) pp.1-9 (.pdf)
Movers from cities with longer commutes
live further from work, at first.