Christopher Y. Olivola

Associate Professor of Marketing

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Bio

Christopher Olivola is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University. Before joining the Tepper School of Business and Carnegie Mellon University, he was a Newton International Fellow in the Behavioural Science Group at the Warwick Business School (WBS), in the UK. His research continues to be funded by the Royal Society and The British Academy. Before moving to England, he received a joint-PhD in psychology and policy from Princeton University. Before Princeton, he received a B.A. in psychology from the University of Chicago. Before that, he spent his pre-adult life growing up on 4 different continents (mostly in developing countries).

Education

• Princeton University - Ph D (Psychology and Social Policy (Joint)) - 2009
• Princeton University - MA (Psychology) - 2006
• The University of Chicago - BA (Psychology) - 2003

Research

• Charitable giving & nonprofit marketing • Consumer financial decision making • Intertemporal choice • Social marketing and first impressions (marketing the self) • Political marketing

Publications

• Decision by Sampling: Connecting Preferences to Real-World Regularities
  Big Data in Cognitive Science

  (author(s): Christopher Olivola, Nick Chater)
  Taylor and Francis, 2017; 294–319

• Numerical Magnitude Evaluation as a Foundation for Decision Making

  (author(s): Christopher Olivola, Nick Chater)
  Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40, 2017; e183

• The Biasing Effects of Appearances Go Beyond Physical Attractiveness and Mating Motives

  (author(s): Christopher Olivola, Alexander Todorov)
  Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40, 2017; e38

• Co-authorship trends in the field of management: Facts and perceptions

  (author(s): Chengwei Liu, Christopher Olivola, Balázs Kovács)
  Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2017

• Searching Choices: Quantifying Decision Making Processes Using Search Engine Data

  (author(s): Helen Susannah Moat, Christopher Olivola, Preis Tobias, Chater Nick)
  Topics in Cognitive Science 8, 2016; 685–696

• Patience Auctions: The Impact of Time vs. Money Bidding on Elicited Discount Rates

  (author(s): Christopher Olivola, Stephanie Wang)
  Experimental Economics, 2016

• The Value of Nothing: Asymmetric Attention to Opportunity Costs Drives Intertemporal Decision Making

  (author(s): Daniel Read, Christopher Olivola, David Hardisty)
  Management Science

• Response to Bonnefon et al.: Limited ‘kernels of truth’ in facial inferences

  (author(s): Alexander Todorov, Friederike Funk, Christopher Olivola)
  Trends in Cognitive Sciences 19(8), 2015; 422–423

• Taxes and Consumer Behavior
  The Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Psychology

  (author(s): Christopher Olivola, Abigail Sussman)
  2015; 564-588

• The Cognitive Psychology of Sensitivity to Human Fatalities: Implications for Life-Saving Policies

  Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences 2(1), 2015; 141–146

• Social Attributions from Faces: Determinants, Consequences, Accuracy, and Functional Significance

  (author(s): Alexander Todorov, Christopher Olivola, Ron Dotsch, Peter Mende-Siedlecki)
  Annual Review of Psychology 66, 2015; 519–545

• Characterizing the Time-Perspective of Nations with Search Engine Query Data

  (author(s): Takao Noguchi, Neil Stewart, Christopher Olivola, Helen Moat, Tobias Preis)
  PLoS-One 9(4), 2014; e95209

• Is Psychological Essentialism an Inherent Feature of Human Cognition?

  (author(s): Christopher Olivola, Edouard Machery)
  Behavioral and Brain Sciences 37, 2014; 499

• Many Behavioral Tendencies Associated with Right-leaning (Conservative) Political Ideologies are Malleable and Unrelated to Negativity

  (author(s): Christopher Olivola, Abigail Sussman)
  Behavioral and Brain Sciences 37, 2014; 323–324

• Social Attributions from Faces Bias Human Choices

  (author(s): Christopher Olivola, Friederike Funk, Alexander Todorov)
  Trends in Cognitive Sciences 18, 2014; 566–570

• The Many (Distinctive) Faces of Leadership: Inferring Leadership Domain from Facial Appearance

  (author(s): Christopher Olivola, Dawn Eubanks, Jeffrey Lovelace)
  The Leadership Quarterly 25(5), 2014; 817–834

• Using Big Data to Predict Collective Behavior in the Real World

  (author(s): Helen Moat, Tobias Preis, Christopher Olivola, Chengwei Liu, Nick Chater)
  Behavioral and Brain Sciences 37, 2014; 92–93

• Open minded? Here’s how much facial stereotyping influences your decisions

  The Conversation, 2014

• The Martyrdom Effect: When Pain and Effort Increase Prosocial Contributions

  (author(s): Christopher Olivola, Eldar Shafir)
  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 26(1), 2013; 91–105

• Effects of Symptom Presentation Order on Perceived Disease Risk

  (author(s): Virginia Kwan, Sean Wojcik, Talya Miron-shatz, Ashley Votruba, Christopher Olivola)
  Psychological Science 23(4), 2012; 381–385

• Republicans Prefer Republican-Looking Leaders: Political Facial Stereotypes Predict Candidate Electoral Success Among Right-Leaning Voters

  (author(s): Christopher Olivola, Abigail Sussman, Konstantinos Tsetsos, Olivia Kang, Alexander Todorov)
  Social Psychological and Personality Science 3(5), 2012; 605–613

• Unfakeable Facial Configurations Affect Strategic Choices in Trust Games with or without Information about Past Behavior

  (author(s): Constantin Rezlescu, Brad Duchaine, Christopher Olivola, Nick Chater)
  PLoS-ONE 7(3), 2012; e34293

• Axe the Tax: Taxes Are Disliked More than Equivalent Costs

  (author(s): Abigail Sussman, Christopher Olivola)
  Journal of Marketing Research 48(S91–S101), 2011

• The Science of Giving: Experimental Approaches to the Study of Charity

  (author(s): Daniel Oppenheimer, Christopher Olivola)
  Taylor and Francis, 2011; 274 pages

• The Science of Giving: What Motivates Charitable Giving?

  Nexus, 2011; 1 page

• When Noble Means Hinder Noble Ends: The Benefits and Costs of a Human Preference for Martyrdom in Altruism
  The Science of Giving: Experimental Approaches to the Study of Charity

  Taylor and Francis, 2011; 13 pages

• Death Tolls and Our Perception of Human Fatalities

  British Academy Review, 2010; 42-44

• Elected in 100 Milliseconds: Appearance-Based Trait Inferences and Voting

  (author(s): Christopher Olivola, Alexander Todorov)
  Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 34(2), 2010; 83–110

• Fooled by First Impressions? Reexamining the Diagnostic Value of Appearance-Based Inferences

  (author(s): Christopher Olivola, Alexander Todorov)
  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46(2), 2010; 315–324

• Coincidence
  Encyclopedia of Medical Decision Making

  (author(s): Christopher Olivola, Daniel Oppenheimer)
  Sage Publications, 2009; 142-144

• Distributions of Observed Death Tolls Govern Sensitivity to Human Fatalities

  (author(s): Christopher Olivola, Namika Sagara)
  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106(52), 2009; 22151–22156

• Linguistic and Metalinguistic Intuitions in the Philosophy of Language

  (author(s): Edouard Machery, Christopher Olivola, Molly De Blanc)
  Analysis 69(4), 2009; 689-694

• The Look of a Winner

  (author(s): Christopher Olivola, Alexander Todorov)
  Scientific American, 2009

• Doing Unto Future Selves As You Would Do Unto Others: Psychological Distance and Decision Making

  (author(s): Emily Pronin, Christopher Olivola, Kathleen Kennedy)
  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34(2), 2008; 224-236

• Randomness in Retrospect: Exploring the Interactions Between Memory and Randomness Cognition

  (author(s): Christopher Olivola, Daniel Oppenheimer)
  Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 15(5), 2008; 991-996

• Egocentrism
  Encyclopedia of Human Development

  (author(s): Emily Pronin, Christopher Olivola)
  Sage Publications, 2006; 441-442

Working Papers

• A Structural Model of Mental Accounting

  (author(s): Nicholas Pretnar, Alan Montgomery, Christopher Olivola)
  2016

Awards and Honors

• Association for Psychological Science (APS) - Featured as an APS "Rising Star" (2013)
• John Templeton Foundation - John Templeton Fellowship for post-doctoral research (2012)
• Society for Judgment and Decision Making - Society for Judgment and Decision Making Hillel Einhorn Award (2012)
• Lloyd’s Bank - Finalist for the first Lloyd’s Science of Risk Prize (final 5 for the Behavioral risk category) (2010)
• Society for Judgment and Decision Making - 1st-place Student Poster Award for poster presented (2009)
• Society for Personality and Social Psychology - Society for Personality and Social Psychology Student Travel Award for paper presented (2009)
• University of Chicago Booth - University of Chicago Booth Student Travel Grant for paper presented (2008)
• Society for Judgment and Decision Making - 1st-place Student Poster Award for poster presented (2007)
• Dartmouth/Tuck TCR Conference - Marketing Science Institute Travel Award for paper presented (2007)
• SPSP JDM Preconference & NYU Stern - NYU Stern Student Travel Award for poster presented (2007)
• Princeton University - Merit Prize (2004)
• The University of Chicago - Graduated with General Honors and with Honors in Psychology (2003)

University Service

• Undergraduate Business Administration Educational Affairs Committee, Committee Member (2014 - )
• Marketing Seminar, Workshop Organizer, Organized Marketing seminar series (2014 - )

Consulting

• Danone (October 2012 - October 2012)