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Emily Prinsloo

Emily Prinsloo

Assistant Professor of Marketing

Virani Undergraduate School of Business

CONTACT

emily.prinsloo@rice.edu

WEBSITE(S)| Profile | Personal Site

SURF Mentoring

Potential projects/topics: This project examines how people make judgments and decisions in everyday life, particularly in social and consumer contexts. Students will support research exploring topics such as how individuals manage and form impressions (e.g., deflecting praise, giving or receiving backhanded compliments, or engaging in strategic self-disclosure), how they make decisions under risk and uncertainty (e.g., overlooking valuable opportunities or misunderstanding probabilities), and how consumers and organizations navigate ethical dilemmas (e.g., accepting donations from morally tainted donors). Projects may include literature reviews, the design of behavioral experiments, qualitative coding of open-ended responses, data cleaning, survey creation and testing, data analysis, and writing. The research is grounded in social and cognitive psychology, with applications in marketing, behavioral science, organizational behavior, and public policy.

Potential skills gained: Introduction to behavioral research methods and experimental design, data cleaning and basic statistical analysis, literature synthesis in psychology and consumer or organizational behavior, understanding of core concepts in decision-making

Required qualifications:

  • Required skills: Curiosity about human behavior, comfort with reading and writing, and attention to detail are important. Experience with tools like Qualtrics, R, and SPSS are welcome but not required.
  • Preferred course completions: There are no required majors or coursework, though prior coursework on experimental design and statistics and data analysis is a plus.
  • Preferred majors: The project is well-suited for students interested in psychology, (behavioral) economics, marketing, organizational behavior, or social science more broadly, but could also be of interest to students studying statistics or data science.

Direct mentor: Faculty/P.I.

Research Areas

Her research spans the consumer behavior and judgment and decision-making fields. Specifically, it bridges three streams: (1) charitable giving, (2) goals and motivation and (3) impression management. Within the first stream, one project examines the potentially damaging evaluations nonprofits face when receiving donations from tainted donors. Within the second stream, another project shows that people sometimes engage in opportunity neglect — rejecting low-probability opportunities even when these come with no objective costs. Within the third stream, another project documents the (in)effectiveness of backhanded compliments — seeming praise that draws comparison with a negative standard.