A member of the Coller School of Management Administration’s faculty at TAU, Prof. Shani’s research focuses on how counterfactual emotions, anticipated or experienced, influence and bias behavioral choices. His research on information search identifies reasons that motivate people to search for useless information (e.g., why consumers compare prices of products purchased a while ago). His research about the psychological principles underpinning consumers’ economic behaviors, examines the repercussions of inserting an economic transaction mindset into a social relationship (i.e., mixing money and friendship). Last, his research seeks to unravel the link between self-deception proclivities and consumers’ choices and explain how consumers justify the purchase of products they do not really need.
Prof. Yaniv Shani

Short Biography
Fields of Research
- Applied Social Psychology
- Attitudes and Belief
- Emotion, Affect
- Judgment and Decision Making
- Consumers behavior
Publications
Shani, Y. (2007). Searching for Negative Information. The pains of “Suspecting the Worst” Versus the Comforts of “Knowing the Worst”. Tilburg Publishers, pp. 118, 2007
Shani, Y., Tykocinski, O., & Zeelenberg, M. (2008). When Ignorance is Not Bliss: How Distressing Uncertainty Drives the Search of Negative Information. Journal of Economic Psychology, 29, 643-653.
Shani, Y., & Zeelenberg, M. (2007). When and Why do We Want to Know? How Experienced Regret Promotes Post-Decision Information Search. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 20, 207-222. (lead article)
Shani, Y., Igou, E., & Zeelenberg, M. (2009). Different perspectives on unpleasant truths: How construal levels influence information search. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 110, 36-44.
Shavit, T., Giorgetta, C., Shani, Y., & Ferlazzo, F. (2010). Using an eye tracker to examine behavioral biases in investment tasks: An experimental study. Journal of Behavioral Finance, 11, 185-194.
Shani, Y., Cepicka, M.C., & Shashar, N. (2011). Keeping up with the Joneses: Dolphins’ search knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Journal of Economic Psychology, 32, 418 – 424.
Shani, Y., van de Ven, N. & Zeelenberg, M. (2012). Delaying information search. Judgment and Decision Making, 7, 750-760.
Shani, Y., & Zeelenberg, M. (2012). Post-decisional information search: The pains of suspecting the worst versus the comforts of knowing the worst. Social Influence, 7, 193 - 210.
Shavit, T., Rosenboim, M. & Shani, Y. (2013) What is more important, The outcome or the probability? Applied Economics Letters, 20, 127 - 130.
Shavit, T., Rosenboim, M., & Shani, Y. (2014) Time preference and optimism bias before and after a risky activity: A field experiment, Journal of Economic Psychology, 43, 30-36.
Breugelmans, S. M., Zeelenberg, M., Gilovich, T., Huang, W. H., & Shani, Y. (2014) Generality and cultural variation in the experience of regret Emotion, 6, 1037 - 1048.
Shani, Y., Danziger, S., Zeelenberg, M. (2015) Choosing between options associated with past and future regret. (2015). Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 126, 107-114.
Barkan, R., Danziger S., & Shani, Y. (2016) Do as I say not as I do. Choice-advice differences in decisions to learn information. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 125, 55-67
Shani, Y. (2017) When Sharing Is Not Caring: Does uncertainty about bill payment method lead diners to consume more and spend more money? Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 30, 453-461..
Danziger, S., Disatnik, D., & Shani, Y. (2017) Remembering Friends as Not So Friendly in Competitive and Bargaining Social Interactions, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 30, 987– 998.
Shani, Y., Appel, G., Danziger, S., & Shachar, R. (2020) When and why consumers “accidentally” endanger their products. Management Science, 66 (12), 5757-5782
Vainapel, S., Shani, Y., & Shalvi, S. Motivated Interpretations of Deceptive Information. Forthcoming at Brain Sciences.
Zickfeld, et al. Tears Trigger the Intention to Offer Social Support: A Systematic Investigation of the Interpersonal Effects of Emotional Crying Across 41 Countries. Forthcoming at Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
Morvinski, C., & Shani, Y. Misaligned mindsets between borrowers and lenders of small interpaersonal loans. Forthcoming at Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.