Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior

George Newman is interested in the application of basic cognitive processes, such as categorization and causal reasoning, to consumer behavior.

Currently, his research examines the psychological processes underlying our concepts of authenticity and authentic "originals" in the domains of art, celebrity possessions, and consumer products. He is also interested in pro-social behaviors such as charitable giving and purchasing environmentally-friendly products, and how consumers may balance their desires to “do good” with desires to maximize the efficiency of their donations or purchases.

Newman has published work on essentialism, perceptions of animacy, children’s conceptual development, causal reasoning, and identity continuity.

Selected Articles

"The Counterintuitive Effects of Thank-you Gifts on Charitable Giving" (with J. Shen), Journal of Economic Psychology, forthcoming

"Art and Authenticity: The Importance of Originals in Judgments of Value" (with P. Bloom), Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
 
"Bar Graphs Depicting Averages are Perceptually Misinterpreted: The within-the-bar bias" (with B. Scholl), Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, forthcoming
 
"Why Are Lotteries Valued Less Multiple Tests of the Direct Risk-aversion Hypothesis" (with D. Mochon), Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 7, pp. 19-24, 2012

"Celebrity Contagion and the Value of Objects" (with G. Diesendruck and P. Bloom), Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 38, 215-228, 2011

"Sensitivity to Design: Early Understandings of the Link Between Agents and Order" (with F. Keil, V. Kuhlmeier, and K. Wynn), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 107, No. 40, 17140-17145, September, 2010 

"End-of-Life Biases in Moral Evaluations of Others" (with K. Lockhart and F. Keil), Cognition, Vol. 115, 2010

"The Psychophysics of Chasing" (with T. Gao and B. Scholl), Cognitive Psychology, Vol. 59, 2009 

"Eight Month Old Infants Infer Unfulfilled Goals, Despite Contrary Physical Evidence" (with J.K. Hamlin and K. Wynn), Infancy, Vol. 14, No. 5, 2009

"The Origins of Causal Perception: Evidence from Postdictive Processing in Infancy" (with H. Choi, K. Wynn and B. Scholl), Cognitive Psychology, Vol. 57, 2008

"Where’s the Essence Developmental Shifts in Children’s Beliefs about Internal Features" (with F.C. Keil), Child Development, Vol. 79, 2008

"Biases Towards Intrinsic Features in Infants' Reasoning About Objects" (with P. Hermann, K. Wynn and F.C. Keil), Cognition, Vol. 107, 420-432, 2008

"Two Tales of Conceptual Change: What Changes and What Remains the Same" (with F.C. Keil), in S. Vosniadou, ed., The Handbook of Conceptual Change, Erlbaum, 2008

"Out of sorts Remedies for theories of object concepts: A reply to Rhemtulla and Xu" (with S.V. Blok and L.J. Rips), Psychological Review, Vol. 114, 2007

"Tracing the Identity of Objects" (with S.V. Blok and L.J. Rips), Psychological Review, Vol. 113, 1–30, 2006

"Beliefs in Afterlife as a By-product of Persistence Judgments" [commentary] (with S.V. Blok and L.J. Rips), Behavioral & Brain Sciences, Vol. 29, 480-481, 2006 

"Units of Visual Individuation in Rhesus Macaques: Objects or Unbound Features" (with E.W. Cheries, L.R. Santos and B.J. Scholl), Perception, Vol. 35, 1057-1071, 2006

"Individuals and Their Concepts" (with S.V. Blok and L.J. Rips),  in W. K. Ahn, R. L. Goldstone, B. C. Love, A. B. Markman & P. Wolff eds., Categorization Inside and Outside the Lab, American Psychological Association, 2005 

"Inferences about Individual Identity" (with S.V. Blok and L.J. Rips), Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 80–85, Erlbaum, 2001 

Education
PhD Yale University, 2008
MPhil Yale University, 2007
MS Yale University, 2005
BA Northwestern University, 2002