Scott Rick

Behavioral Scientist, University of Michigan

Highlights

Research

Olson, Jenny, and Scott Rick (2022), “You Spent How Much? Toward an Understanding of How Romantic Partners Respond to Each Other’s Financial Decisions,” Current Opinion in Psychology, 43 (February), 70-74.

Rick, Scott (2018), “Tightwads and Spendthrifts: An Interdisciplinary Review,” Financial Planning Review, 1, e1010.

Rick, Scott, Beatriz Pereira, and Katherine Burson (2014), “The Benefits of Retail Therapy: Making Purchase Decisions Reduces Residual Sadness,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 24 (3), 373-380.

Press

How to Adjust Your Brain for 8.5% Inflation

Wall Street Journal

Speaking of Psychology Podcast on Tightwads and Spendthrifts

American Psychological Association

A Spendthrift 5-Year-Old? Researchers Say Yes

Wall Street Journal

CV

Scott Rick is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. Rick received his PhD in Behavioral Decision Research from Carnegie Mellon in 2007, and he then spent two years as a post-doctoral fellow at Wharton. Rick’s research focuses on understanding the emotional causes and consequences of consumer financial decision-making, with a particular interest in the behavior of tightwads and spendthrifts. The overarching goal of his work is to understand when and why consumers behave differently than they should behave (defined by an economically rational benchmark, a happiness-maximizing benchmark, or by how people think they should behave), and to develop marketing and policy interventions to improve consumers’ decision making and well-being.