CURRENT RESEARCH | Ed O'Brien

Current Research
(July 2025)

Here in the Time & Change Lab, we're currently trying to solve problems like:

How to motivate people to return to happy experiences?

People often seek novel experiences despite enjoying present ones, a tendency that can foster various real-world challenges (e.g., for firms trying to retain repeat customers; for efforts to reduce waste; for helping people maximize the hedonic value of the things they already have). We study this problem by diving deeper into the psychology underlying people's return decisions. For example, we document various ways in which people appear to want to "wait for the right time" to return to happy experiences, even at added present costs. Thus, our research suggests that one can better motivate people to return by framing return opportunities to better match the moment.

Example papers:

Hagen and O'Brien (forthcoming, PNAS Nexus), "Lost
Time Undermines Return Behavior"
Li, Hsee, and O'Brien (2023, JMR), "'It Could Be Better'
Can Make It Worse"
Winet and O'Brien (2023, JPSP), "Ending on a Familiar
Note: Perceived Endings Motivate Repeat Consumption"

For example, the figure to the right shows the key results of
Study 1 from Hagen and O'Brien (forthcoming, PNAS Nexus).
We assessed consumers' return behavior to various economic
activities following COVID-19 shutdowns. The longer the gap
had felt to consumers, the more that consumers freely chose
to delay their returns even further to "wait for the right time."

How to combat hedonic adaptation and keep experiences feeling new?

A core psychological question of both theoretical and practical importance entails how repeated exposure affects people. Traditionally, this research tests outcome effects (e.g., whether ad repetitions increase purchasing). We take a unique approach that tests experience effects in tandem (e.g., what exactly changes in consumers' minds across ad repetitions?). We find that helping people pay attention makes repeated exposure not so repetitive after all—people find new things and make new connections that they miss at initial exposures. And the more novelty that people discover across repetitions, the more that they exhibit classic outcome effects (e.g., increased purchasing).

Example papers:

Hong and O'Brien (R&R, JCR), "Repeatedly Soliciting Hedonic Reactions Can Exacerbate Hedonic Adaptation"
O'Brien (2021, Consumer Psychology Review), "A Mind Stretched: The Psychology of Repeat Consumption"
*ISSEP Best Paper Award 2023
O'Brien (2019, JPSP), "Enjoy It Again: Repeat Experiences Are Less Repetitive Than People Think"

For example, the figure above shows the key results of Study 1 from O'Brien (2019, JPSP). Visitors at a Chicago museum went through an exhibit. We then randomly assigned them to merely imagine going through again vs. to actually go through again. Repeat visits were more enjoyable than visitors expected, driven by discovered novelty.

How to excite people's expectations of future change?

People today face change everywhere—from ever-advancing gadgets and AI technologies to ever-newer media offerings and popular trends. How do people keep up? Our research suggests that they don't. We study change perception processes that make it hard for people to appreciate such changes. For example, our research shows how firms can target these processes to help consumers better appreciate the firm's present and future offerings.

Example papers:

Wang and O'Brien (data collection complete; writing for JCR),
"How Will Today's Marketplace Look Tomorrow? Consumer
(Mis)Perceptions of How Products 'Age' Over Time"
O'Brien (2024, Psychological Review), "A Flexible Threshold
Theory of Change Perception in Self, Others, and The World"
Klein and O'Brien (2018, PNAS), "People Use Less Information
Than They Think to Make Up Their Minds"

For example, in Wang and O’Brien (writing for JCR), we ask people to compare products in the present era (e.g., technologies, household goods, media, hairstyles, brand logos) to equidistant ones from past and imagined future eras. We find that people think the future will look similar to the present despite realizing the present looks different from the past. The figure above shows sample results for brand logos. Moreover, this affects consumer behavior. We find that people choose to buy present products and adopt present trends not just because they think this will provide immediate present value (which presumably is correct)—but also because they think this will provide distant future value (which may often be incorrect in today's rapidly changing marketplace). We find that drawing attention to future change helps people calibrate their expectations and make purchases that provide longer-lasting value.