Research Notes: Prof. Eric Hamerman

Eric Hamerman’s paper “Conditioned Superstition: Desire for Control and Consumer Brand Preferences,” co-authored with Gita Johar, professor of business at Columbia University, has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Consumer Research. The paper explores the notion of conditioned superstition, the idiosyncratic superstitions people form through everyday associations between a product and an outcome. The authors find that people are more likely to engage in superstitious behavior when they have a high level of desire to control an uncertain outcome combined with a low perception of their ability to do so. Furthermore, Hamerman and Johar find that after engaging in superstitious behaviors, individuals are more likely to predict a successful outcome. Hamerman is an assistant professor of marketing at the A. B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University.