Leslie K. John
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Leslie John is an assistant professor of business administration in the Marketing Unit, where she teaches the Marketing course in the MBA required curriculum. Professor John’s research centers on how consumers’ behavior and lives are influenced by their interaction with firms and with public policy. Her work has been published in academic journals including the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Social Psychological and Personality Science, and The Journal of the American Medical Association. It has also received media attention from outlets such as The New York Times, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Time magazine. Professor John holds a Ph.D. in behavioral decision research from Carnegie Mellon University, where she also earned an M.Sc. in psychology and behavioral decision research. She completed her bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of Waterloo.
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Article
| JMR, Journal of Marketing Research
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The Impact of Relative Standards on the Propensity to Disclose
Alessandro Acquisti, Leslie John and George Loewenstein
Two sets of studies illustrate the comparative nature of disclosure behavior. The first set investigates how divulgence is affected by signals about others' readiness to divulge. Study 1A shows a "herding" effect, such that survey respondents are more willing to divulge sensitive information when told that previous respondents have made sensitive disclosures. We provide evidence of the process underlying this effect and rule out alternative explanations by showing that information on others' propensity to disclose affects respondents' discomfort associated with divulgence (Study 1B) and not their interpretation of the questions (Study 1C). The second set of studies suggests that divulgence is anchored by the initial questions in a survey; people are particularly likely to divulge when questions are presented in decreasing order of intrusiveness. Study 2B suggests that the effect arises by affecting people's judgments of the intrusiveness of the inquiries; Study 2C goes further by showing that the effect is altered when privacy concerns are primed at the outset of the study. This research helps understand how consumers' propensity to disclose is affected by continual streams of requests for personal information and by the equally unavoidable barrage of personal information about others.
Keywords: Judgments;
Surveys;
Consumer Behavior;
Standards;
Corporate Disclosure;
Management Practices and Processes;
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Article
| Pediatrics
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Effects of Description of Options on Parental Perinatal Decision-Making
Marlyse F. Haward, Leslie John, John M. Lorenz and Baruch Fischhoff
Objective: To examine whether parents' delivery room management decisions for extremely preterm infants are influenced by (a) the degree of detail with which options-comfort care (CC) or intensive care (IC)-are presented or (b) their order of presentation. Methods: 309 volunteers, 18-55 years old, were each randomized to one of 4 groups: 1. detailed descriptions, CC presented first; 2. detailed descriptions, IC presented first; 3. brief descriptions, CC presented first; and 4. brief descriptions, IC presented first. Each received the description of a hypothetical delivery of a 23-week gestation infant and chose either IC or CC. Open-ended and structured questions elicited reasoning. Data were analyzed by chi-square and logistic regression analysis. Results: Neither degree of detail, comparing groups 1+2 with 3+4 (37% v 41%, OR=0.85, 95%CI=0.54-1.34, p=0.48), nor order, comparing groups 1+3 with 2+4 (40% v 37 %, OR=0.88, 95%CI=0.56-1.39; p=0.59), influenced the likelihood of choosing IC. Participants choosing IC were more likely to invoke sanctity of life and religiosity as personal values. Additional reasons for choosing IC were experiences with infants born at later gestational ages, giving the baby a chance, not watching their baby die, and equating CC with euthanasia. Some choosing CC wanted to avoid infant suffering. Conclusions: The degree of detail and order of presentation had no effect on treatment decisions, suggesting that individuals bring well-articulated preexisting preferences to such decisions. Understanding beliefs and attitudes motivating these preferences can assist physicians in helping parents make informed decisions consistent with their values.
Keywords: Decision Making;
Presentations;
Mathematical Methods;
Personal Characteristics;
Attitudes;
Motivation and Incentives;
Family and Family Relationships;
Value;
Health Care and Treatment;
Citation: Haward, Marlyse F., Leslie John, John M. Lorenz, and Baruch Fischhoff. "Effects of Description of Options on Parental Perinatal Decision-Making." Pediatrics 129, no. 5 (2012).
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Article
| Psychological Science
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Measuring the Prevalence of Questionable Research Practices with Incentives for Truth-telling
Leslie K. John, George Loewenstein and Drazen Prelec
Cases of clear scientific misconduct have received significant media attention recently, but less flagrant transgressions of research norms may be more prevalent and in the long run more damaging to the academic enterprise. We surveyed over 2,000 psychologists about their involvement in questionable research practices, using an anonymous elicitation format supplemented by incentives for honest reporting. The impact of incentives on admission rates was positive and greater for practices that respondents judge to be less defensible. Using three different estimation methods, we find that the proportion of respondents that have engaged in these practices is surprisingly high relative to respondents' own estimates of these proportions. Some questionable practices may constitute the prevailing research norm.
Keywords: Research;
Practice;
Motivation and Incentives;
Surveys;
Values and Beliefs;
Measurement and Metrics;
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Article
| Preventive Medicine
| Forthcoming
Empirical Observations on Incentives for Weight Loss
Leslie John, George Loewenstein and Kevin Volpp
Behavioral economic-based interventions are emerging as powerful tools to help individuals accomplish their own goals, including weight loss. Deposit contract incentive systems give participants the opportunity to put their money down toward losing weight, which they forfeit if they fail to lose weight; lottery incentive systems enable participants to win money if they attain weight loss goals. In this paper, we pool data from two prior studies to examine a variety of issues that unpublished data from those studies allow us to address. First, examining data from the deposit contract treatments in greater depth, we investigate factors affecting deposit frequency and size and discuss possible ways of increasing deposits. Next, we compare the effectiveness of both deposit contract and lottery interventions as a function of participant demographic characteristics. These observations may help to guide the design of future, longer-term, behavioral economic-based interventions.
Keywords: Personal Development and Career;
Economic Growth;
Contracts;
Motivation and Incentives;
Banks and Banking;
Organizational Design;
Strategic Planning;
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Article
| Journal of General Internal Medicine
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Financial Incentives for Extended Weight Loss: A Randomized, Controlled Trial
Leslie John, Laurie Norton, Jennifer Fassbender, Andrea Troxel, George Loewenstein and Kevin Volpp
Keywords: Finance;
Health;
Motivation and Incentives;
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Journal Article
| Journal of Consumer Research
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Strangers on a Plane: Context-dependent Willingness to Divulge Sensitive Information
Leslie John, Alessandro Acquisti and George Loewenstein
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Article
| Social Psychological & Personality Science
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The Price of Good Intentions
Derek Koehler, Rebecca White and Leslie John
Self-predictions are highly sensitive to current intentions but often largely insensitive to factors influencing the readiness with which those intentions are translated into future behavior. When such factors are under a person's control, they could be used to increase the probability that desired future behavior will be undertaken, but they will be underused if self-predictions underestimate their impact. This hypothesis was borne out in two experiments involving working students attempting to achieve a savings goal: They strongly intended to save, made overly optimistic self-predictions even when it was costly to do so, and were willing to pay very little for a service that could help them save more because they did not anticipate its impact on their future behavior. By contrast, students who were informed of the service's actual impact were willing to pay more for it, and students did not underestimate the impact of the service on fellow students.
Keywords: Planning;
Saving;
Behavior;
Forecasting and Prediction;
Citation: Koehler, Derek, Rebecca White, and Leslie John. " The Price of Good Intentions." Social Psychological & Personality Science 2, no. 1 (January 2011).
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Article
| Medical Decision Making
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Changes of Heart: The Switch-Value Method for Assessing Value Uncertainty
Leslie John and Baruch Fischhoff
Keywords: Value;
Risk and Uncertainty;
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Article
| JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association
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Financial Incentive Based Approaches for Weight Loss: A Randomized Trial
Kevin Volpp, Leslie John, Andrea Troxel, Laurie Norton, Jennifer Fassbender and George Loewenstein
Keywords: Finance;
Health;
Motivation and Incentives;
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