Social Psychology Network

Maintained by Scott Plous, Wesleyan University

Kathleen D. Vohs

Kathleen D. Vohs

Kathleen Vohs, Land O’ Lakes Chair in Marketing, Vohs’s research specialties include self-regulation (particularly in terms of predicting impulsive spending, overeating among dieters, and making a bad impression); self-processes (such as self-esteem); the effects of making choices; the psychology of money; and heterosexual sexual relations as predicted by economic principles. She has authored more than 150 scholarly publications and served as the editor of 8 books, and she has written extensively on self-regulation, intrapersonal and interpersonal processes, the objective consequences of self-esteem, free will beliefs, bulimic symptoms, and consequences of self-control failure on impulsive behavior.

Vohs has received several awards and honors. Vohs won a SAGE Young Scholar Award in the field of social and personality psychology (2008) and was named the International Society for Self and Identity Outstanding Early Career Award winner (2009). At the University of British Columbia, she received the Canada Research Chair in Marketing Science and Consumer Psychology. At the University of Minnesota, she was named a McKnight Land-Grant Professor (2007-2009) as well as a McKnight Presidential Fellow (2008-2010). The Carlson School appointed Vohs the Land O'Lakes Professor of Excellence in Marketing in 2011. In 2012, she became the Honorary Chair in Experimental Consumer Research in the Faculty of Economics and Business, Groningen University, the Netherlands. She won the Free Will Essay Prize from Templeton for a forthcoming piece in Scientific American (2013). In late 2013, she was awarded the Anneliese Maier Research Award by the Humboldt Foundation (part of the German Ministry of Research and Education), which is a competition across all sciences, humanities, law, and economics. In 2014, she was named a 'Best Business School Professors Under 40' by Poets and Quants and 'Breakthrough Business Thinker to Watch' by Inc.com.

Primary Interests:

  • Applied Social Psychology
  • Emotion, Mood, Affect
  • Helping, Prosocial Behavior
  • Interpersonal Processes
  • Judgment and Decision Making
  • Life Satisfaction, Well-Being
  • Personality, Individual Differences
  • Self and Identity
  • Sexuality, Sexual Orientation
  • Social Cognition

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Video Gallery

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Sexual Economics: A Model of Heterosexual Behavior

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  • 19:24

    Sexual Economics: A Model of Heterosexual Behavior


  • 3:29

    Willpower and Self Control in Consumer Decision Making


  • 2:38

    Money and the Mind


  • 2:14

    Can Cash Be a Prescription for Pain?


  • 46:48

    Money Makes People Less Socially Focused


  • 3:33

    Self-Affirmation Can Enable Goal Disengagement


  • 2:33

    Stereotypes Can Deter Consumer Purchases


  • 1:13

    How Respect Affects Trust


  • 3:23

    Dispreferred Markers and Word-of-Mouth Communication


  • 19:47

    Everyday Temptations: An Experience Sampling Study on People and Their Desires


  • 14:24

    Why Self-Control Is Important for Success


  • 1:18

    Benefits and Limitations of Mindfulness


  • 15:44

    Grooving on Cognitive Dissonance (Behavioral Grooves podcast)



Journal Articles:

Kathleen D. Vohs
Marketing Department
Carlson School of Management
321 19th Avenue South, Suite 3-150
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455
United States of America

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