Dr. Yonatan Vanunu

Dr. Yonatan Vanunu is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University, with a dual affiliation at the Sagol School of Neuroscience. He earned his Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from UNSW Sydney, followed by two postdoctoral fellowships—one in the Cognition and Aging Lab at Ohio State University and another in the Marketing Department at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Yonatan’s research focuses on how consumers evaluate products and make decisions under limited cognitive capacity. He employs empirical methods and process-tracing techniques, such as eye-tracking and computational modeling, to uncover the mechanisms underlying consumer behavior and the biases that arise when it becomes difficult to process all available information—a common challenge in today’s marketplace. His theoretical approach highlights the adaptive nature of decision-making, proposing that individuals use selective attention to prioritize the most relevant or salient information, which in turn shapes behavior. Yonatan’s work has been published in high-impact journals, including PNAS, Psychology and Aging, Cognitive Psychology, and Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

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Marketing, Cognitive Psychology, Consumer Behavior, Judgment and Decision Making, Attention, Perception, Computational Modeling.

Vanunu, Y., & Ratcliff, R. (in press). The interplay between selective attention and summary statistics. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Vanunu, Y., & Newell, B. R. (in press). The impact of sampling bias on preferences for skewed distributions in decisions from experience. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Vanunu, Y. & Ratcliff, R. (2023). The effect of speed-stress on driving behavior: a diffusion model analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 
 

Ratcliff, R. & Vanunu, Y. (2022). The effect of aging on decision-making while driving: A diffusion model analysis. Psychology and Aging. 37(4), 441–455.
 

Vanunu, Y., Hotaling, J. M., Le Pelley, M. E. & Newell, B. R. (2021). How top-down and bottom-up attention modulate risky choice. Proceeding of the National Academy of Science. 118 (39).
 

Vanunu, Y., Hotaling, J. M. & Newell, B. R. (2020). Elucidating the differential impact of extreme-outcomes in perceptual and preferential choice. Cognitive Psychology, 119, 101274.
 

Vanunu, Y., Pachur, T. & Usher, M. (2019). Constructing preference from sequential samples: the impact of evaluation format on risk attitudes. Decision, 6(3), 223-236.
 

 Brusovansky, M., Vanunu, Y., & Usher, M. (2019). Why we should quit while we’re ahead: When do averages matter more than sums? Decision, 6(1), 1.

Papers Under Review and Working Papers
 

Vanunu, Y. & Ratcliff, R. (R&R in Psychological Review). Forming numerosity representations: A theory of selective sampling.

Vanunu, Y., Donnelly, K. (R&R in Journal of Marketing Research). Center of attention: Spatial position affects quantity judgments and product preference.

Vanunu, Y. & Newell, B. R. (R&R in Judgment and Decision Making). Can increased processing noise induce better decisions? Evidence polarization through exponential weighting.

Vanunu, Y., Urminsky, O.  & Bartels, B. (Working Paper). Coping with complexity: A selective sampling account of how people form consideration sets of product bundles.

Vanunu, Y. & Urminsky (Working Paper). The quantity-discount fallacy.

Vanunu, Y., Donnelly K. & Sussman A. B. (Working Paper). Evaluating banking statements based on the characteristics of deposits and withdrawals.

Vanunu, Y. & Ratcliff, R. (R&R in Psychological Review). Forming numerosity representations: A theory of selective sampling.
 

Vanunu, Y. & Newell, B. R. (R&R in Judgment and Decision Making). Can increased processing noise induce better decisions? Evidence polarization through exponential weighting.
 

Vanunu, Y. & Newell, B. R. (Submitted to PNAS). The Impact of Sampling Bias on Preferences for Skewed Distributions in Decisions from Experience.
 

Vanunu, Y., Donnelley, K. (Submitted to JMR). Spatial position affects quantity judgments and product preference.
 

Vanunu, Y., Urminsky, O.  & Bartels, B. (Working Paper). Coping with complexity: A selective sampling account of how people form consideration sets of product bundles.