Leif D. Nelson
Leif D. Nelson is the Ewald T. Grether Professor of Business Administration and Marketing at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, according to his CV. He is the first author, with Tom Meyvis, of "Interrupted consumption: disrupting adaptation to hedonic experiences", published in the Journal of Marketing Research in 2008.
Who they are
This page records only his role as stated on his CV and the content of the cited paper. Biography beyond that is not given here.
Key papers
Interrupted consumption (2008), with Meyvis. Across six studies, the authors interrupted consumption experiences such as listening to noises or songs and sitting in a massage chair. Breaks disrupted hedonic adaptation and, as a result, intensified the experience that followed. Pleasant experiences became more enjoyable after a break and unpleasant ones more irritating. Yet people's own choices ran the other way: they avoided breaks in pleasant experiences and chose breaks in unpleasant ones.
Key ideas
The finding turns hedonic adaptation from something that simply happens into something partly under a person's control. Adaptation works fastest when an experience is continuous, so a pause resets some of its effect. The paper also shows a gap between what people prefer and what serves them: intuition says that a break spoils a pleasure, when in these studies it renewed it.
Applied to spending, the result suggests rationing pleasures that can be paused and finishing unpleasant tasks in one go. Those applications stretch laboratory results with songs, noises and massage chairs to everyday life, and should be read as informed suggestions rather than tested advice.
Sources
- Nelson, L. D., & Meyvis, T. (2008). Interrupted consumption: disrupting adaptation to hedonic experiences. Journal of Marketing Research, 45(6), 654-664. doi:10.1509/jmkr.45.6.654
- Leif D. Nelson, curriculum vitae, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.