Research
Publications, Manuscripts in the Review Process, and Working Papers
Mehr, Katie S. and Matt Meister (2026), “People Prefer Novices for Advice Generated from Direct Experience and Experts for Advice Generated from Data Synthesis and Extrapolation,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 193. (Click here for a copy of the paper)
Abstract: People are often exposed to advice and opinions from both “novices”—people with relatively limited domain experience—and “experts” people with relatively deeper domain experience. This manuscript explores whether people (i) rely on both groups equally, (ii) consistently favor one over the other, or (iii) rely on novices in certain contexts and experts in others. Across six preregistered studies, we find evidence for the third possibility, and show that the fit between the advice generation process and expertise affect reliance on advice. Specifically, people rely more on novices for advice and opinions from direct lived experience and experts for advice or opinions from data synthesis and extrapolation. This is because people think novices have experiences that are more similar to the ones they will have, while experts do not, but may be better at synthesizing and extrapolating from data. Notably, this distinction is not simply about the domain being advised, but is specific to the advice generating process—in a given domain, people’s reliance on novices and experts can be manipulated by changing their understanding of how the advice or opinion was generated. This pattern of results is generalizable to many domains (e.g., job choice, product ratings). Further, our results build on previous work highlighting from whom people seek advice and opinions, and provide practitioners with insight into when people may be more or less likely to rely on their advice and opinions.
Mehr, Katie S., Jackie Silverman, Marissa A. Sharif, Alixandra Barasch, and Katherine L. Milkman (2025),
“The Motivating Power of Streaks: Increasing Persistence Is As Easy As 1, 2, 3,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 187, 1-13. (Click here for a copy of this paper)
Abstract: Organizations often use financial incentives to boost employees’ commitment to work-relevant goals in an effort to increase persistence and goal achievement (e.g., to improve organizational efficiency or sales). We introduce and test a novel incentive scheme designed to enhance persistence by increasing commitment to the goal of maximizing earnings. Specifically, we test “streak incentives,” or rewards that offer people increasing payouts for completing multiple consecutive work tasks. Across six pre-registered studies (total N = 4,493), we show that, contrary to standard economic models suggesting people will complete more piece-rate work for larger rewards, people actually complete more work when compensated with streak incentives than with larger, stable incentives. We theorize that this occurs because, by encouraging consecutive task completion, streak incentives increase commitment to a goal of maximizing earnings, which in turn increases persistence. We also show that this effect is not driven by providing increasing rewards; rather, people’s goal commitment and motivation are boosted by the requirement that they complete work tasks consecutively to earn escalating payments. Taken together, our results suggest that designing incentives to encourage streaks of work is a low-cost way to increase goal commitment and therefore persistence in organizations and other contexts.
Mehr, Katie S., and Joseph P. Simmons (2024), “How Does Rating Specific Features of an Experience Alter Consumers’ Overall Evaluation of That Experience?” Journal of Consumer Research, 51(4), 739-760. (Click here for a copy of the paper)
Abstract: How does the way companies elicit ratings from consumers affect the ratings that they receive? In 10 pre- registered experiments, we find that consumers rate subpar experiences more positively overall when they are also asked to rate specific aspects of those experiences (e.g., a restaurant’s food, service, and ambiance). Studies 1-4 established the basic effect across different scenarios and experiences. Study 5 found that the effect is limited to being asked to rate specific features of an experience, rather than providing open-ended comments about those features. Studies 6-9 provided evidence that the effect does not emerge because rating positive aspects of a subpar experience reminds consumers that their experiences had some good features. Rather, it emerges because consumers want to avoid incorporating negative information into both the overall and the attribute ratings. Lastly, study 10 found that asking consumers to rate attributes of a subpar experience reduces the predictive validity of their overall rating. We discuss implications of this work and reconcile it with conflicting findings in the literature.
Mehr, Katie S., Amanda E. Geiser, Katherine L. Milkman, and Angela L. Duckworth (2020), “Copy
Paste Prompts: A New Nudge to Promote Goal Achievement,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 5(3), 329-334. (Click here for a copy of this paper)
Abstract: Consumers often struggle to achieve self-set, life-improving goals. We introduce a novel, psychologically wise nudge - the copy-paste prompt - that encourages consumers to seek out and mimic a goal-achievement strategy used by an acquaintance. In a large (N = 1,028) preregistered, longitudinal study, participants randomly assigned to receive a copy-paste prompt spent more time exercising the following week than participants assigned to either a quasi-yoked or simple control condition. The benefits of copy-paste prompts are mediated by the usefulness of the adopted exercise strategy, commitment to using it, effort put into finding it, and the frequency of social interaction with people who exercise regularly. These findings suggest that further research on the potential of this virtually costless nudge is warranted.
Mehr, Katie S. and Matt Meister, “The Dispersion Between Forecasts Changes Consumers' Reliance on Them,” invited for revision at the Journal of Consumer Research.
Abstract: Consumers often seek out predictions from multiple sources; for instance, they might consult a financial advisor, family, friends, and more before investing their money. But how consumers integrate these predictions is uncertain. At one extreme, consumers could rely solely on the advisors’ predictions, and combine them via methods like averaging. At the other extreme, they could ignore the advisors altogether and instead rely on their priors. This paper shows that as the absolute difference between two estimates increases, consumers move from relying more on advisors’ predictions to relying more on their priors. When advisor estimates are similar, consumers rely on the estimates and largely average them to arrive at an evaluation. But as the dispersion between advisor estimates increases, consumers rely less on the advisors and more on their own priors. This pattern occurs for both hypothetical and incentivized choices, and across a wide array of domains (e.g., sports, stocks, etc.), prediction formats (e.g., percentage, price, etc.), and dependent measures (e.g., estimated likelihood, judgment of success, etc.). Results also show how firms can emphasize averaging advice to reduce reliance on priors when dispersion is high. Taken together, these results highlight how dispersion affects the information consumers use when facing advice.
Mehr, Katie S.* and Michael O'Donnell*, “How Product Type and Duration Affect Buy Now, Pay Later Usage,” under review.
Abstract: Buy now, pay later (BNPL) is an increasingly popular way consumers pay for their purchases. However, little is known about the types of products consumers use BNPL to pay for. Investigating this question, this manuscript has three primary findings. First, extending previous work exploring how product type affects use of credit options, consumers are more likely to use BNPL (vs. a debit card) for material and long-term purchases. Second, the authors compare BNPL to paying with a credit card and find that consumers are more sensitive to product duration when considering using BNPL (versus credit cards). Specifically, consumers are less likely to use BNPL for experiential or short-term purchases. Third, the authors establish that these effects are driven by how granularity of credit affects perceived effort: because BNPL requires opening a new line of credit for each transaction, consumers want to match the effort of opening a new line of credit with the duration of the purchase, and therefore are averse to opening a new line of credit via BNPL for short-term purchases. This work shows how specific features of BNPL differentiate it from other forms of credit and impact purchases.
Park, Alexander B.*, Katie S. Mehr*, and Amirreza Faghihinia, “Who Shares Matters: How the Number of Sharers Affects Perceptions of Change and Choice,” under review.
Abstract: People often receive information about targets (e.g., products, jobs) over time. For instance, a listener might hear from a sharer that a café is good, but later hear from the same sharer that their second visit was bad. In this manuscript, we explore how (a) the number of sharers and (b) the pattern of information shared about the target’s quality affect perceptions of change and, in turn, choice. While some prior research suggests that listeners may view multiple perspectives from a single sharer as inherently correlated and therefore less reliable, other work suggests that listeners may attribute observed differences in information from a single sharer to changes in the target itself, given that the sharer remains constant. Across five preregistered experiments (N = 5,148), we test these competing predictions and find evidence for the latter: conflicting information from a single sharer (vs. multiple sharers) leads to stronger attribution of quality change and, in turn, influences choice. Specifically, when a single sharer provides conflicting information in a positive-then-negative pattern, listeners are more likely to infer a decline in quality, leading to lower choice of the target than when identical information is shared across multiple sharers. Importantly, this effect is attenuated when (a) the pattern suggests improvement (negative-then-positive), (b) quality appears stable over time, or (c) the sharer is seen as having fickle preferences. Finally, we show the effect extends to downstream consequences, including reduced likelihood of seeking future advice.