Seminar in Cognition and Consumer Behavior
- type: Seminar (S)
- chair: Institute for Customer Insights (CIN)
- semester: WS 25/26
- lecturer: Dr. rer. nat. Nico Gradwohl
- sws: 2
- lv-no.: <a target="lvn" href="https://campus.studium.kit.edu/events/0x05ACDAA24D9348F8A8503BD41B03AC6F">2500049</a>
- information: On-Site
| Content | The cognition and behavior of individual consumers drives the behavior of collectives like markets. In this seminar you get to address current trends on the border between consumer behavior, marketing, and cognitive psychology. This semester the seminar focuses on the role of different types of risk and uncertainty in lay judgments of innovations and technology. Specifically, we ask what keeps people from adopting new technologies: Is it a known probability of failure (named aleatory uncertainty) or uncertainty about these probabilities and unknown error (named epistemic uncertainty)? And: which role do narratives of singular successes or errors play? This literature-based seminar will provide insights into current academic findings on this topic and explore new avenues for research. Participating in this seminar will prepare you for writing your master thesis. You will learn to effectively summarize and structure existing research, to translate findings into recommendations for marketing and public policy, and to develop conceptual and empirical foundations for future research. Feedback on your performance will help you to improve your scientific writing and presentation skills. |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Bibliography | Aven, T. and Zio, E. (2014), Foundational Issues in Risk Assessment and Risk Management. Risk Analysis, 34, 1164–1172. https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.12132 Fischhoff, B., Slovic, P., Lichtenstein, S., Read, S., & Combs, B. (1978). How safe is safe enough? A psychometric study of attitudes towards technological risks and benefits. Policy Sciences, 9, 127–152. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00143739 Olschewski, S., & Scheibehenne, B. (2024). What’s in a sample? Epistemic uncertainty and metacognitive awareness in risk taking. Cognitive Psychology, 149, 101642. 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101642 Slovic, P. (1987). Perception of risk. Science, 236(4799), 280–285. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.3563507 |
| Organisational issues | Application for this Seminar takes place exclusively via the WiWi portal during the specified timeframe (01.10.2025 to 13.10.2025). Please refrain from requests until the end of the application phase. There will be a kick-off and a final presentation. Central criteria for evaluating your performance are the identification of relevant scientific sources, a systematization of literature, the highlighting of central findings, a clear, concise and intelligible presentation of results, and the identification of interesting research gaps. • Di 4.11.2025, 15:45-17:15 -- Kick-off |