Decision Science News

BUSINESS SCHOOLS RESPOND TO DEMAND FOR USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Advertising has changed a bit since the early 1960s

Today the New York Times / International Herald Tribune ran a piece on teaching social media marketing in business schools entitled Business Schools Respond to Demand for Use of Social Media. The courses of your Decision Science News editor, and other Marketing academics such as friend of the site Andrew Stephen, were discussed. What to do when such a story hits the media other than to put it back into social media? Hence this post.

Excerpt:

To meet this demand for education in social media strategy, several top business schools are incorporating courses on social networks into their M.B.A. curriculums. These include Harvard Business School; London Business School; Insead, the international business school based in Fontainebleau, France; and the École des Hautes Études Commerciales, known as H.E.C., in Paris.

M.B.A. curriculums are geared toward students with business intelligence, knowledge of communication trends and a flair for innovation. Social network courses aim to build on their existing skills to teach an understanding of social media, of how to build marketing strategies within social networks and of how to track their effectiveness.

Why the picture of TV’s Mad Men?

“It’s about testing things, and not about ‘Mad Men’-style intuition,” Professor Goldstein said, referring to the popular U.S. television series about whiskey-soaked advertising executives in 1960s New York.

Those who want to teach themselves Internet Marketing at home may find the syllabus useful.

PICK NCAA WINNERS WITH THE LARGEST COMBINATORIAL PREDICTION MARKET EVER

Tracking 9.2 quintillion outcomes, Predictalot offers something for everyone.

Dave Pennock sits behind the Decision Science News editor at Yahoo! Research (a kind of academic department sitting inside a company). Much more importantly, he has lead a team that has built what is probably the largest prediction market in history. The market is called Predictalot and its first mission is a fun one: the predict NCAA basketball winners.

The team is: Mani Abrol, Janet George, Tom Gulik, Mridul Muralidharan, Sudar Muthu, Navneet Nair, Abe Othman, Daniel Reeves, Pras Sarkar.

What’s special about Predictalot is that it lets you bet on just about anything that you like, and all the bets are interconnected (which helps it make better predictions of what will happen). Says Dave

Because we track all possible outcomes, the predictions are automatically interconnected in ways you would expect. A large play on Duke to win the tournament instantly and automatically increases the odds of Duke winning in the first round; after all, Duke can’t win the whole thing without getting past the first round.

And

A combinatorial market maker fulfills an almost magical promise: propose any obscure proposition, click ‘accept’, and your bet is placed: no doubt and no waiting.

You can play Predictalot by clicking to play directly, or by adding it to your Yahoo home page.

Predictalot is a combinatorial prediction market and it’s been generating a lot of media interest, for example:

• Crowdsourcing the NCAA tournament (NY Times Bits)
• Yahoo’s New Crowdsourcing Predictalot App Picks NCAA Winners (NY Times VentureBeat)

FINDINGS PAPERS AND CONCEPTUAL CONTRIBUTIONS WELCOMED

This week, we post an editorial from the Journal of Consumer Research, an “A” Marketing journal that publishes quite a bit of quality judgment and decision-making research. JCR is now welcoming shorter findings papers and longer conceptual papers. In the past, some folks felt that JCR was leaning too heavily towards multi-experiment empirical papers. And if you’re a psychologist thinking that “multi-experiment” means 3 studies of 26 participants each, hold onto your hat because it wasn’t unusual to see JCR papers with 5 studies of 100 participants each.  (DSN hasn’t fact checked this, but it does vaguely remember an ACR Conference luncheon address in which the speaker had calculated one need to run something like 800 participants (including pilot studies and studies eventually dropped for length concerns) to get a paper in ACR). The distribution of article types should be changing now, for the better.

Does anyone remember what that number was? We think is was 800 or 900. Also, does anyone have an idea why psychology done in a marketing journal involves so many more participants per condition than psychology done in a psychology journal?

Journal of Consumer Research
Editorial

Broadening the Scope of Consumer Research

In analyzing the types of submissions we receive, it is clear that the majority fall into one of two bins. The first category of papers consists of psychological pieces that offer theoretical advances with empirical support. These papers sometimes propose a new phenomenon and the process by which it occurs or they dig deeper into the process underlying an established phenomenon. They provide evidence for the relation between putative causes and observed effects (the theorized process) by testing for mediation, moderation, and boundary conditions. Such papers commonly present several experiments to provide evidence for the underlying process and to rule out alternative process accounts. For example, as a consequence of this detail, the average number of studies reported in JCR papers in the last year is 3.5. The second category of papers consists of qualitative research, much of it conducted within the consumer culture theory paradigm. These papers put the disembodied heads of consumers, which is the focus of the psychological studies, back on their bodies, situate them in a culture and moment and so provide a rich contextual understanding of consumer behavior. Despite some chafing, these fields work as a team to advance the study of consumer behavior, coming at our understanding from high to low, from big picture to thin slices. Missing from these sets are at least two types of papers that we would be pleased to receive, and that we highlight in this essay. The first set is findings papers (heavy on effects, light on theory). The second is conceptual contributions (heavy on idea, light on data). Both types of papers are important means by which a field moves forward and are highly appropriate for JCR. Each has distinctive criteria by which their contribution is evaluated. We briefly discuss these criteria below.

Findings papers are distinct from the more common articles because their contribution would be judged on the nature of the effect, not the establishment of the underlying process. Only a small number of papers would make the grade in this category as the effect would have to be new, important, and provocative. Such novel effects would not be common but when they are found, we want to know about them right away. The findings would be interesting because they run counter to established theory, conventional wisdom, or lay beliefs (Van Den Bergh, Dewitte, and Warlop 2008; Brendl, Markman, and Messner 2003), open new avenues of study about important areas of consumer research that the field has not yet pioneered (Peck and Childers 2003), or suggest ways in which consumers are made better or worse off because of surprising ways in which they think or behave (Hsee, Yu, Zhang, and Zhang 2003). The goal in these papers is to establish the effect credibly, to ensure it is not some better known effect in superficially unfamiliar guise, and, if possible to point the field in direction for future study by highlighting moderators or boundary conditions or by suggesting the general direction of underlying process. However, these papers would not be required to nail down the underlying process, although some of the papers cited as examples above do go a long way in this regard. Authors might not yet know what is producing a new effect. Holding up publication of the phenomenon while the authors try to figure it out fails to utilize the talents of the field. By publishing the effect, the authors turn it over to the community with its portfolio of skills for further exploration. In other words, send us your “cool ideas,” in appropriately short, to-the-point papers, quite possibly with a single study. Our reviewers are skilled in judging both quality of the effect and the establishment of process and they can advise the editors of the contribution on each path. While our reviewers might commonly emphasize process evidence, particularly for longer papers that are intended to explore underlying mechanisms, these reviewers have the ability and our editorial encouragement to judge contribution considering effects alone. Our turnaround time is fast and the editors are supportive. We want to see this work.

Conceptual contributions are also distinct from the more common articles because their contribution would be judged on making breakthrough ideas or providing new ways of thinking about an important aspect of consumer behavior. Only a small number of these papers would make the grade here as well because the idea would need to be breakthrough, interesting, theoretically grounded, clarifying, and generative (capable of stimulating research). Whereas we anticipate that “effect” type papers might be shorter than the typical JCR paper, conceptual contributions may be longer than the traditional paper since they reflect “big” ideas that may take considerable space to articulate. Two categories of these articles are called “new perspectives” and “integrative frameworks.”

New perspectives introduce a new construct, theory, or domain that is important but has not been considered in our field despite its clear potential for generating new insights. In some cases these articles are particularly important because they illuminate an idea that rings true even though it may run counter to a prevailing paradigm, world view, or metaphorical lens for viewing consumer behavior. Such is true with Holbrook and Hirschman’s (1982) paper on experiential consumption. In other cases, they make us consider ideas that have been considered elsewhere (gift-giving, Sherry 1983; family identity, Epp and Price 2008; sharing, Belk 2010) but which have not been considered in our field, despite their clear potential for adding insight. These papers would not merely introduce an idea that has been studied elsewhere. Instead, they would show how our understanding of consumers and consumer behavior may be enhanced or changed by its study. The goal of both sets of papers is to introduce the new idea, show why it is important, articulate how it differs from the prevailing idea or what gaps it fills, and show what new ideas its study can bring about. Often, these papers provide organizing frameworks, visual devices or comparative charts that visually depict the idea and what new things it might explain. They may offer suggestions on how to study this construct, theory or domain, and/or develop explicit hypotheses which can be tested in future research (Alba and Hutchinson 1987).

A second category of conceptual contribution is the integrative framework. These articles organize a large body of consumer research studies (and perhaps studies from adjacent fields as well) into a new perspective. Papers that make the grade here do not merely review or summarize what is known about a construct, theory, or domain. They develop an elegant higher order parsimonious perspective that both accommodates past findings and accounts for anomalous ones. Such is true with Petty and Cacioppo’s (1986) Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion, Cohen and Reed’s (2006) Multiple Pathway Anchoring and Adjustment model of attitude generation and recruitment, or Bettman, Luce, and Payne’s (1998) model of constructive choice. Novelty here comes from organizing existing findings into a powerful yet simplified view that adds clarity and reduces complexity. Novelty also comes from articulating new ideas that derive from the framework that other researchers can test empirically. Here too, we would not hold authors responsible for testing new ideas from their integrative perspective. Instead, we would expect that these ideas would be followed up by other researchers.

In sum, we are delighted with the quality of submissions to the journal but we encourage authors presently working on or contemplating effects articles or conceptual pieces to consider the Journal of Consumer Research a welcoming outlet for their contributions.

John Deighton, Editor-in-Chief
Debbie MacInnis, Editor
Ann McGill, Editor
Baba Shiv, Editor

CHOICE ARCHITECTURE ON WHEELS

Decision Science News was in a cab in Houston some years ago. The driver said that he did not like it when people paid by credit card, claiming that if the card turned out not to be good, it was his loss. DSN never really understood this. Perhaps in Houston they used the old-fashioned schoonk-schoonk credit card readers that don’t approve the card first? One would have thought the drivers would appreciate having less cash on hand, giving people less reason to rob them.

New York City cabs now have credit card readers and touch-screen computers in the back. They present the passenger with preconfigured tip options, which start at 15%. The passenger can enter his or her own tip, but this requires more typing. What does this do to the amount people tip? The data are in. It turns out that the cabbies get bigger tips when cards are used.

Why? Good question. Perhaps when people tip by cash they tend to round against the driver’s favor. Or perhaps the menu of choice options causes people to see the merits of tipping at least 15%. Or perhaps when the least-effort option is to tip 15% or more, people will go down the path of least resistance. Similar, but not totally similar to default effects, a specialty of the house here at Decision Science News.

P.S. DSN likes to use its PayPass. One simply holds his or her keychain (or special credit card) up to a PayPass reader in the back of the cab et voila, payment magically occurs. It is the ultimate in payment decoupling, you literally do not have to touch anything in order to pay. We see a future PhD thesis topic in this somewhere. Would not having to touch anything make you more likely to pay? Would you pay more?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/69593289/sizes/m/

MAX PLANCK SUMMER INSTITUTE ON BOUNDED RATIONALITY

This week, Decision Science News brings you a summer school and a few spring workshops. The summer school is the one at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, brought to you by Gerd Gigerenzer and Nobel laureate Smith and will feature a lecture by Ariel Rubenstein. Now, those are three people who know a thing or two about bounded rationality!

Foundations for an Interdisciplinary Decision Theory
05 – 12 July, 2010
Berlin, Germany

Directed by: Gerd Gigerenzer & Vernon Smith
Evening Lecture: Ariel Rubinstein
Location: Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition
Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
Deadline to apply: March 20th, 2010

It is our pleasure to announce the Summer Institute on Bounded Rationality 2010 – Foundations of an Interdisciplinary Decision Theory, which will take place from July 5th to 12th, 2010 at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. The objective of the Summer Institute is to provide a platform for interdisciplinary research, bringing together young scholars from psychology, economics, biology, philosophy, and neuroscience. It wants to push for a common understanding of the way Homo Sapiens forms decisions, challenging the reigning assumptions in the individual disciplines. This year, the evening lecture will be given by Ariel Rubinstein.

Talented graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from around the world are invited to apply by March 20th, 2010. We will provide all participants with accommodation and stipends to cover part of their travel expenses. Details on the Summer Institute and the application process are available at http://www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/SummerInstitute .

Please pass on this information to potential candidates from your own department or institute.

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INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON CLINICAL REASONING

When: Saturday 17 April to Sunday 18 April 2010
Where: London, UK
Keynote speakers: Professor Valerie Reyna (Cornell University) and Professor Willem Kuyken (University of Exeter)
Sponsor: European Association for Decision Making (EADM)
Website: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/medicine/research/hscr/seminars/iwcr/

The 5th International Workshop on Clinical Reasoning provides a forum for researchers who investigate the mental processes of clinicians making diagnostic and treatment decisions.

We welcome contributions that present empirical evidence, theoretical accounts as well as planned research. These are examples of topics that would be of interest: research into various modes of clinical reasoning (e.g. intuitive, analytical, heuristic, causal), the circumstances when the different modes may not be appropriate and lead to error, the types of knowledge involved, how the features of the task may influence reasoning, individual differences in reasoning, strategies for improving reasoning, methodologies for the study of clinical reasoning.

For the first time, the workshop will aim to bring together researchers of medical diagnostic reasoning and of psychodiagnostic reasoning (‘case formulation’), and thus provide the opportunity for cross-fertilisation between two domains that do not often interact.

Scientific Committee
York Hagmayer, University of Göttingen
Olga Kostopoulou, King’s College London
Cilia Witteman, Radboud University Nijmegen

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ASSISTING DECISION MAKERS: A WORKSHOP MEETING

When people find it difficult to make decisions, they may benefit from assistance given to them by other people. Those providing assistance may be experts in a particular domain (e.g., medicine, law, finance) or in the way that decisions should be made (decision support). There are four types of help that people may receive. First, they may be given information in some form that makes it easy for them to use. For example, this information may relate to risks associated with different choices. Second, they may receive advice from other people about an appropriate course of action or about some uncertain quantity, such as the risks or expected returns associated with different courses of action. Third, they may share their decision making process with the person assisting them. Fourth, they may have their decision made for them.

This workshop will focus on these approaches to assisting decision makers and on factors relevant to choosing which should be used in different situations. It is supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council and it will be held at University College London on 15 and 16 April. Invited speakers include J Frank Yates (Michigan), Ilan Yaniv (Jerusalem), and Eric Stone (Wake Forest).

If you wish to present a poster of relevant work at the meeting, please send its title and a 150-word abstract to Matt Twyman (m.twyman@ucl.ac.uk) before 5pm on March 12th 2010. There may also be a few slots available for spoken presentations. Please let Matt know if you would be interested in filling one.

Attendance at the meeting incurs no cost but you need to register by sending an email to Matt Twyman (m.twyman@ucl.ac.uk) by 12 March 2010. He will confirm your registration and provide you with further details.

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We invite submissions to the following forthcoming conference:

Behavioural Finance Working Group Conference:

Topic: Fairness, Trust and Emotions in Finance.
Date: 1-2 July 2010
Venue: Behavioural Finance Working Group, Cass Business School, London, UK
Keynote Speaker: Robert Olsen, Institute of Behavioral Finance

Organisers: Richard Fairchild (School of Management, University of
Bath), Gulnur Muradoglu (Cass Business School) and Daniel Zizzo
(University of East Anglia).

Special Issue: Presenters have the option to have their papers
considered for a special issue of the International Journal of
Behavioural Accounting and Finance.

The deadline for submissions is May 21st 2010

The detailed Call for Papers is as follows:

Overview: Traditionally, financial economists have based their analysis
of financial contracting on the assumption that agents are fully
rational, emotionless, self-interested maximizers of expected utility
(the homo economicus assumption). Behavioural economists are
increasingly recognizing that financial decision makers may be subject
to psychological biases, and the effects of emotions (the homo sapiens
view). An interesting area of research examines the implications of
assuming that agents are not completely self-interested, but that they
also consider the impact of their actions on the payoffs of others. In
this meeting, we will consider the effects of fairness, trust, empathy,
fellow-feeling, and emotional reactions on financial contracting,
incentives and performance.

We seek contributions from areas which include while not being limited
to the following issues:

-decision-making at the corporate level (for example, the effect of
emotions, trust, and empathy on the FDI decision and on capital
budgeting),

-decision making at the start-up level (the effect of fairness, trust
and empathy on venture capitalist/entrepreneurial financial
contracting, incentives and performance),

-decision making at the investor level (investors’ trust in corporate
managers).

We invite you to submit extended abstracts, papers-in-progress or full
papers by the deadline of May 21st 2010.

The organisers will come back with a decision within three weeks after
this deadline.To submit a paper for consideration please email a PDF
version of the paper to [1]Behavioural-Finance@city.ac.uk

Papers chosen for submission will, at the author’s request, be
considered for publication for a Special Issue of the International
Journal of Behavioural Accounting and Finance

Kind regards,
Gulnur Muradoglu
Cass Business School

ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH 2010 CONFERENCE

Conference Announcement and Call for Submissions
Conference website: http://www.acrweb.org/acr/

The 2010 North American Conference of the Association for Consumer Research will be held at the Hyatt Regency Riverfront in Jacksonville, FLfrom Thursday, October 7 through Sunday, October 10, 2010.

The theme of ACR 2010 is: Think BIGBig Ideas. Big Findings. We would like to promote research that has a big picture focus. Big picture research either involves building theories that apply to a wide range of phenomena or discovering “big” phenomena that are of real importance to consumers’ lives. We also would like to promote a big picture way of communicating findings and theories at the conference. We would like talks to focus on the main ideas at the expense of detail. Several changes at this year’s conference reflect the Think Big theme. Every special session will have four, shorter talks. Session chairs are asked to kick-start discussion about big picture implications at the end of special and competitive paper sessions. Abstracts in the program will be shorter, encouraging authors to clearly communicate their big picture ideas. Finally, we will appeal to reviewers and Associate Editors to err on the side of big picture contributions instead of methodological perfection.

The conference format will follow that of past years. A pre-conference Doctoral Symposium will be held Thursday (co-chaired by Priya Raghubir and Patti Williams). Thursday evening will feature an opening reception for ACR 2010. The conference program on Friday and Saturday will include competitive paper sessions, special sessions, roundtable discussions, poster sessions, and the film festival. A gala reception will be held Saturday evening.

Format and Program Structure
There are five submission types for ACR 2010.

1. Competitive Papers represent the completed original work of their authors. The ACR conference associate editors and co-chairs assign papers to sessions that reflect similar scholarly interests.
2. Special Sessions provide opportunities for focused attention on significant areas of research. Successful sessions shed light on a specific research area. They raise questions about the state of the area and open avenues for future research.
3. Films at the film festival sessions provide video insight into consumer topics.
4. Roundtables encourage intensive participant discussion of discussion-worthy topics.
5. Poster Sessions present findings from a current working paper. Authors display posters of their research, distribute their papers, and are available to discuss and answer questions during the assigned poster session

A paper submitted in one track cannot be considered in any other track if it is rejected.

Submission and Decision Deadlines

All submissions (for competitive papers, special sessions, films, posters and roundtables) must be received by Monday, March 1, 2010 by 5:00 pm Jacksonville time (EST). Note that this is earlier than last year’s deadline. In order to maintain accessibility to a wide range of participants, each attendee may present only twice in special and/or competitive paper sessions during the conference. When uploading a submission, authors will need to specify the paper presenter.

Notification of acceptance will be made by Friday, July 2, 2010.

General Submission Requirements

1. Submissions should not already be published, or accepted for publication in any journal. Submissions should also not include content that has been presented at earlier North American ACR conferences.
2. It is mandatory that all accepted papers are presented at the conference by an author.

Submission Procedures
All submission activity (submissions, reviews and notifications) for ACR 2010 will be electronic, through the conference website (URL:http://www.acrweb.org/acr/).

In order to use the conference website (e.g., to submit a manuscript or provide a review), you will need to sign up at and create a user profile (follow the online instructions). If you are already signed up (i.e., if you have used this ACR conference management system in the past), please log in to the system and update your user profile (content and methods codes). To log in and update your profile, please click here .”

Any time you log on to the website, you will see the following message: “To submit a paper or a proposal, please click here. ” Please click on the link and follow the instructions.

All submissions to the 2010 ACR Conference website require the following information:

• Submission Type: Competitive Paper, Special Session, Film, Poster, Roundtable.
• Title of Submission
• Primary Contact Information: name, affiliation, mailing address, phone number and email address for the author who serves as the primary contact
• Names of Co-authors/Other Participants and their affiliations, and whether they are presenting author(s).
• Content Area Codes and Methodological Area Codes for your submission (These are critical for assigning reviewers – please pick codes that provide the best match to your work).
• Declaration that the submission has not been accepted for publication elsewhere.
• Signed copyright release form.
Use Word 2003 or Rich Text Format file format to upload.
Use consistent author name: All authors need to ensure that their names appear in the same way in all submissions. This is because the database will consider Gita Johar, Gita V. Johar, and Gita Venkataramani Johar as three different authors and may result in a program that has Gita presenting at the same time in three different rooms.
Time limit. Please note that the website will time you out after 60 minutes. Therefore, in order to avoid losing information, it is best to copy and paste your information into submission fields rather than composing it online.

Acknowledgement of receipt. The primary contact person will automatically receive an email acknowledgement of receipt of the submission. If you do not receive an acknowledgement, please check your spam folder. If you do not receive an acknowledgement within 48 hours after submission, please send an email inquiry about the status of your submission to: ACR2010@chilleesys.com.

Specific Information for each Type of Submission

Please see the conference website: http://www.acrweb.org/acr/

Contact info
All program-related queries:
Email: ACR2010@rsm.nl

All administrative questions, such as, hotel, payment, registration, dietary restrictions:
Email: acr@acrwebsite.org

DECISION MAKING OR SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY?

There are those who consider the field of Judgment and Decision Making to be much like the field of Social Psychology, and others who find them as similar as vodka and water.

How can we, as the French say, préciser la différence?

Decision Science News has taken it upon itself to brew up a little textual analysis with the most recent conference programs of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making (SJDM) and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP).

DSN counted how many times each word appeared in each program, then made a list of words that occurred in both programs, then deleted words that occurred three times or fewer in either program, then calculated for each word its rate per 10,000 words in each program, then looked at the words that had the greatest difference in the frequency of occurrence between programs, and then struck the uninteresting ones. Here are the results:

Words that are much more common in decision-making than in social psychology
(Rate per 10,000 words)

Words that are much more common in social psychology than in decision-making
(Rate per 10,000 words)

One can see not only differences in topic areas, but methodological differences as well (for example, social psych’s love of 2×2 ANOVA designs and median splits causes the words “high” and “low” to make it onto the list; perhaps this also explains why “positive” and “negative” appear).

Which field would you rather be in?

A PEPPERY COMMITMENT DEVICE

Decision Science News was having dinner with Shlomo Benartzi recently, not far from his beloved Four Seasons Hotel in New York. At the end of the meal, a chocolate souffle was ordered. Halfway through the souffle, Benartzi asked “would you like any more of this?” Decision Science News declined and watched as Benartzi took the peppermill in hand and peppered the souffle. The website was thinking that this might be interesting to taste, but then salt was added to the mix.

“There,” grinned Shlomo, “now we won’t eat too much. A little trick I learned.”

DSN appreciates learning of a new commitment device, but does find it strange that somewhere inside the present self, the future self can still obtain and operate condiment dispensers.

SKILLS FOR AN INCREASINGLY MEASURABLE WORLD

In the movie The Graduate, the advice given to a young Dustin Hoffman was “plastics”. Today, another word is being touted as the key to the kingdom: statistics.

Decision Science News found the New York Times article For Today’s Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics to be an inspiration. It especially liked:

“I keep saying that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians,” said Hal Varian, chief economist at Google. “And I’m not kidding.”

The article discusses the role of statisticians at Google. It mentions the $1,000,000 Netflix prize, recently won by a team including Yahoo! Research scientist Yehuda Koren, as well as applications like meme tracking and social network analysis.

MISPLACED SYMPATHY

Decision Science News knows that when faculty from London Business School travel abroad, they are frequently asked “how are things at the London School of Economics?” When the London Business School faculty members say politely that they are at LBS and not LSE, the askers suddenly look sympathetic, as if they’d inquired about a recently deceased pet.

It can be seen as a sensible reaction. The asker has heard of the London School of Economics, had a “false alarm” in thinking they recognized London Business School, and upon realizing that they have not heard of LBS, made the speedy inference it must not be very good. Perhaps this occurs through a variant of the recognition heuristic.

Decision Science News would like to point out that there is no need to feel sorry for London Business School faculty, who generally prefer being at a school of business over a school of economics, and further delight in the knowledge that London Business School was just rated the best MBA Programme in the world by the Financial Times.

Don’t believe their ranking? Well, one could consider the UK Government’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), according to which London Business School is the highest-scoring university in the UK for business, meaning it is higher ranked in business than Cambridge, Oxford, and yes, the London School of Economics with which it is so often confused.

Still unconvinced? Take a perspective from the USA, whose Forbes Magazine ranks LBS as the best MBA program outside the USA.

Need more data? See how the Economist credits LBS’s recent success: “What appears to be happening is that, as the job market for MBAs remains tough, more students are turning to schools with a worldwide reputation”.

So don’t cry for London Business School faculty, rest of world, congratulate them!

photo credit: http://www.forbes.com/