Kellen Mrkva

Professional Summary:

Kellen Mrkva is assistant professor in Marketing at the Hankamer School of Business. Previously, he was a lecturer (assistant professor) at the University of Bath (UK) and postdoc at Columbia Business School. He received his PhD from the University of Colorado and BA from the University of Notre Dame.

His work examines judgment and decision making in many contexts including in the contexts of consumer spending, moral decisions, consumer financial decision making, digital marketing and choice architecture (nudges and retail “dark patterns”). His recent research often includes field experiments or “big data” in addition to laboratory/online experiments. His work has been featured in several academic journals and other outlets including Journal of Marketing, Psychological Science, JPSP, JEP:G, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and Harvard Business Review.

Education:

• PhD – Psychology, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado
• BA – Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana

Courses:

• MKT 3325 – Consumer Behavior

Research Interests:

• Consumer Judgment and Decision Making
• Consumer Behavior
• Behavioral Insights
• Attention and Digital Consumer Behavior
• Moral Decision Making

Selected Publications:

• Posner, N., Simonov, A., Mrkva, K., & Johnson, E. J. (2023). Dark defaults: How choice architecture steers political campaign donations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 120(40), e2218385120-e2218385120.
• Johnson, E. J., & Mrkva, K. (2023). When nudges have societal-level impact. Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 46.
• Reeck, C., Posner, N. A., Mrkva, K., & Johnson, E. J. (2022). Nudging App Adoption: Choice Architecture Facilitates Consumer Uptake of Mobile Apps. Journal of Marketing, 87(4), 510-527.
• Mrkva, K., Posner, N. A., Reeck, C., & Johnson, E. J. (2021). Do nudges reduce disparities? Choice architecture compensates for low consumer knowledge. Journal of Marketing, 85(4), 67-84.
• Mrkva, K., Johnson, E. J., Reeck, C., & Posner, N. A. (2021). Design systems with your most vulnerable users in mind. Harvard Business Review.
• Mrkva, K., Cole, J. C., & Van Boven, L. (2021). Attention increases environmental risk perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 150(1), 83-102
• Mrkva, K., Johnson, E. J., Gächter, S., & Herrmann, A. (2020). Moderating loss aversion: Loss aversion has moderators, but reports of its death are greatly exaggerated. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 30(3), 407-428.
• Mrkva, K., & Van Boven, L. (2020). Salience theory of mere exposure: Relative exposure increases liking, extremity, and emotional intensity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 118(6), 1118-1145.
• Mrkva, K., Westfall, J., & Van Boven, L. (2019). Attention drives emotion: Voluntary visual attention increases perceived emotional intensity. Psychological Science, 30(6), 942-954.
• Mrkva, K., & Van Boven, L. (2017). Attentional accounting: Voluntary spatial attention increases budget category prioritization. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 146(9), 1296-1306.