Faculty & Research

Joshua Ackerman

Assistant Professor of Marketing

Biography | Publications

Joshua Ackerman is an Assistant Professor of Marketing with the MIT Sloan School of Management. His work applies an evolutionary perspective to the psychological mechanisms that drive conscious and nonconscious social coordination in consumer behavior. This has included research on very basic cognitive processing (attention and memory) to executive functioning and interpersonal cooperation. For example, his recent work on vicarious self-control showed that people's ability to resist impulsive behaviors and push themselves to good long-term outcomes is intimately tied to the self-control behaviors of others in the social environment. Within consumer environments, social coordination can affect a range of preference formation, information processing, and decision making processes. Josh received his undergraduate degree from Duke University and his PhD from Arizona State University. Before joining the MIT faculty, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University.