Norbert Schwarz

About

Norbert Schwarz is a provost professor of psychology and marketing at the USC Marshall School of Business. He is an expert in consumer judgment and decision making, investigating how subtle contextual influences shape perceptions and behaviors. His research explores the downstream consequences of these influences on consumer behavior, health behavior, and political preferences. Schwarz has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the German National Academy of Science, and the Academia Europaea, a pan-European academy of arts and sciences. He serves on the editorial boards of leading journals in marketing, psychology, and social sciences. Prior to his current position at USC, he was the Charles Horton Cooley Collegiate Professor of psychology, business, and social research at the University of Michigan.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Mathematics education
• Social psychology
• Epistemology

Selected publications

• Metacognitive experiences as information: Processing fluency in consumer judgment and decision making

  Consumer Psychology Review · 2020 · 150 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Thinking is accompanied by metacognitive experiences of ease or difficulty. People draw on these experiences as a source of information that can complement or challenge the implications of declarative information. We conceptualize the operation of metacognitive experiences within the framework of feelings‐as‐information theory and review their implications for judgments relevant to consumer behavior, including popularity, trust, risk, truth, and beauty.

  DOI

• The Psychology of Fake News

  Routledge eBooks · 2020 · 75 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  This chapter investigates two aspects of misinformation: how to determine whether information (such as a news story) is true, and how the truthfulness of information affects its diffusion or spread. The chapter has a particular focus on the significance of social media for misinformation (in particular fake news): its prevalence, impact, and methods for identifying and studying the phenome- non. We review recent literature on how computational methods and "big data" sources (e.g., social media)…

  DOI

• Misinformed by images: How images influence perceptions of truth and what can be done about it

  Current Opinion in Psychology · 2023-12-02 · 24 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  We organize image types by their substantive relationship with textual claims and discuss their impact on attention, comprehension, memory, and judgment. Photos do not need to be false (altered or generated) to mislead; real photos can create a slanted representation or be repurposed from different events. Even semantically related non-probative photos, merely inserted to attract eyeballs, can increase message acceptance through increased fluency. Messages with images receive more attention and…

  PublisherDOI

• Health Communication and Behavioral Change During the COVID-19 Pandemic

  Perspectives on Psychological Science · 2024-02-06 · 19 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The COVID-19 pandemic challenged the public health system to respond to an emerging, difficult-to-understand pathogen through demanding behaviors, including staying at home, masking for long periods, and vaccinating multiple times. We discuss key challenges of the pandemic health communication efforts deployed in the United States from 2020 to 2022 and identify research priorities. One priority is communicating about uncertainty in ways that prepare the public for disagreement and likely changes…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How funny is ChatGPT? A comparison of human- and A.I.-produced jokes

  PLoS ONE · 2024-07-03 · 18 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Can a large language model produce humor? Past research has focused on anecdotal examples of large language models succeeding or failing at producing humor. These examples, while interesting, do not examine ChatGPT's humor production abilities in ways comparable to humans' abilities, nor do they shed light on how funny ChatGPT is to the general public. To provide a systematic test, we asked ChatGPT 3.5 and laypeople to respond to the same humor prompts (Study 1). We also asked ChatGPT 3.5 to gen…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant P50AG011715

  NIH · $7.9M · 2003

Frequent coauthors

• Herbert Bless

  University of Mannheim

  64 shared

• Daniel Kahneman

  Princeton University

  61 shared

• Fritz Strack

  University of Würzburg

  56 shared

• Alan B. Krueger

  Agricultural Research Service

  55 shared

• David Schkade

  University of California, San Diego

  50 shared

• Arthur A. Stone

  University of Southern California

  48 shared

• Bärbel Knaüper

  McGill University

  29 shared

• Martin Thurnher

  Universität Innsbruck

  26 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Psychology

  University of Michigan

Awards & honors

• Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Elected to the German National Academy of Science
• Elected to the Academia Europaea (pan-European academy of ar…

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