Might AI disclosures that are meant to increase transparency exacerbate the potential for misinformation? In new work with Steve Carney and Ignacio Riveros, we analyze engagement data from TikTok after the platform introduced its AI-generated content (AIGC) disclosure policy. 🧵 (1/7)

Sometimes work is hard and sometimes it’s fun. Today I got to celebrate with Steve Carney and Ignacio Riveros - 2 great USC PhD students I’ve been lucky to work with - as our paper got accepted to the Journal of Consumer Research! & just in time for Ignacio to graduate and head to a job at Meta!

I am excited and honored that our paper “Psychological Ownership of (Borrowed) Money” has been selected as a finalist for the Journal of Marketing Research’s Weitz-Winer-O’Dell award for long term impact! Love the project and working with @eeshasharma.bsky.social and Cindy Cryder

Since the proof of concept paper showing LLMs passing attention checks came out, I’ve been thinking the amount of technical knowledge & compute power needed relative to the low payments for completion just doesn’t make it seem worthwhile at this point. So glad to see this rigorously tested!

I really enjoyed my visit to HKUST for their marketing camp. My first time in Hong Kong. What a wonderful & welcoming faculty. I also had no idea how beautiful the campus location was!

Scary, but prob not the end of online studies (for now). Just because AI can be trained to pass checks doesn’t mean that they will overtake platforms (or support hypotheses). Quality control has always been a concern. This does mean that platforms & researchers need to take it more seriously now.

Interesting - and very consistent with the findings of Longoni, Cian, and Kyung (2023) on AI transference: journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

These kinds of tools, like look-alike audiences, can be really helpful for small companies (if they work well). But companies using them don’t learn about their target market or what makes campaigns successful. Amazon retains all the power and companies who use this will become reliant on them.

I don’t know that stock photos are entirely problematic (tho they do have downsides). The bigger problem is assuming the accuracy of “digital twins” And AI marketing research will continue to be accurate. It works now because we have tons of real human data to feed AI and gave it learn from (1/2)

Calling all baseball fans! The Dodgers generously gave my son’s baseball team a signed ball by Teoscar Hernandez. It’s valued at $500 and the team is raffling the ball off to raise money. Get yourself a ticket! 100% of raffle ticket prices goes to our nonprofit team. www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticket...

Sad that it took 4 stores to find a WSJ, but excited to see a write up of my work with @chiaralongoni.bsky.social and @gilappel.bsky.social in print.

Methodology matters. Don’t trust the overall numbers. This was an opt-in poll weighted by 2024 presidential vote so it recruited more Rs than Ds. However, as the authoritarian dictatorship rises, the folks that still consider themselves Rs are more extreme, and are being over represented.

Price discrimination at its worst. This is likely to penalize customers who are more brand loyal. If so, I don’t see this ending well for Delta. Unless all others follow suit.

If you’re looking for a great book to improve your marketing prowess, The Growth Dilemma by Annie Wilson & Ryan Hamilton is the best book I’ve come across in a long time. It breaks down segmentation and targeting for growing companies really well and provides some nice frameworks to think about.

Check out this new short HBR article explaining our findings about the relationship between AI literacy and AI receptivity and what it means for businesses (research with the amazing @chiaralongoni.bsky.social and @gilappel.bsky.social ) hbr.org/2025/07/why-...

Yes please!!!

YES! More of this. Most people don’t understand how science affects their daily lives and how important the consequences of science cuts for everyone.

This isn't about whether you like Harvard or not. This is about whether any organization in our country has a right to exist without bending the knee to Donald Trump.

Hugely important. Don’t give the current administration any more power over science. Please add a comment!

I am so heartened to this seriously AWESOME #SaveNSF website go up today!!!! Has a take action toolkit with: 1. Press outreach templates 2. Social media toolkit 3. Elected official outreach 4. Talking points Check it out and share widely!!!! Likely more to come. www.savensf.com

Congress needs to block this. This so incredibly detrimental to the health, welfare, and prosperity of the nation.

Thrilled to find out that my amazing colleague @kristindiehl.bsky.social just received an endowed chair!!! And two mentoring awards!! In a world of never ending bad news, this lifted my spirits. So well deserved. Congrats Kristin!!!

I have data on what people think about this! Ongoing research with Chiara Longoni and Azim Shariff.

ACR submissions are almost due. I’m on the round tables committee. We would love to get submissions that are interested in engaging in meaningful debates that affect our field. Please consider submitting something!

🚨 New paper alert 🚨 The explosion of consumer-facing AI raise questions about who is more likely to adopt it. We examined how people’s knowledge of AI impact AI receptivity. Against most people’s expectations, it's not tech experts! And not for the reason you may be thinking🧵

Note to self: Add this rating explanation to my slides at the end of the semester before I give students time to fill out their class evaluations.

What a great financial dataset and cool job opportunity!

Very interesting & consistent with my research with Eesha Sharma and Xiang Wang demonstrating that decisions under scarcity are not inherently less thoughtful or more myopic, but rather driven by attempts to address needs threatened by a lack of responses (JPSP: psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...).

This is a great conference if you are interested in financial decision making. Very interdisciplinary!

Great time sharing my work with @stephtully.bsky.social and Ignacio Riveros at @sjdm-tweets.bsky.social! We find people engage with AI disclosed content less; not because it’s worse quality, but because they feel less connection to the creator. Pre-print here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I’ve officially given up X and am reengaging here. Academic Twitter is dead and I can’t in good conscience support that platform. All the marketing, management, psych, econ, and JDM folks, let me know where you are!

Unfortunate in the short term but in the long term unwarranted profit margins are ultimately an opportunity for new companies to disrupt an industry.

Honored to have AMA recognize research with Wendy de la Rosa on the effect of payment frequency on discretionary spending for the Research in Practice Award.

A huge thank you to my wonderful colleagues for nominating me for an assistant professor chair. Honored to be the Kenneth King Stonier Assistant Professor of Business Administration! Though I'm up for tenure, and since this is only for assistant professors, I am hoping it's a short lived honor.

The victims go beyond those doing research in the surrounding topics. Schools often use cohort comparisons in evaluating tenure cases. Fraud (& p-hacking) lead to unrealistic expectations of productivity, increasing the likelihood that good researchers get denied tenure.

New paper w/ Eesha Sharma & Xiang Wang distinguishes between explanations for scarcity's effect on intertemporal choice. We find that such choices are more rational than prevailing theory suggests, showing that under some conditions scarcity increases willingness to wait. tinyurl.com/ScarcityAndC...

Hi everyone! Just made the jump to Bluesky (Twitter @stephmtully). Looking to rebuild a community over here of people interested in social psychology, marketing, financial decision making, well being, meta science and the like. Let me know if you are out here!