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, Psychological Review,  Psychology and Aging, and Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

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

Publications:

Vanunu, Y., & Ratcliff, R. (2025). The interplay between selective attention and summary statistics. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X25000342

Vanunu, Y., & Ratcliff, R. (2025). A selective sampling account of forming numerosity representations. Psychological Review, 132(5), 1178–1208. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000575

Vanunu, Y.,& Newell, B. R. (2025). The impact of sampling bias on preferences for skewed distributions in decisions from experience. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(15), e2418336122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2418336122

Vanunu, Y.,& Ratcliff, R. (2023). The effect of speed-stress on driving behavior: a diffusion model analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423- 022-02200-2

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. https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000690

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). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2025646118

Vanunu, Y., Hotaling, J. M. & Newell, B. R. (2020). Elucidating the differential impact of extreme-outcomes in perceptual and preferential choice. Cognitive Psychology, 11S, 101274. https://doi.org/10.101c/j.cogpsych.2020.101274

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.http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dec0000098

Brusovansky, M., Vanunu, Y., & Usher, M. (2019). Why we should quit while we’re ahead: When do averages matter more than sums? Decision, c(1), 1.http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dec0000087

Work in Progress:

Vanunu, Y.,& Donnelly, K. (R&R in Journal of Marketing Research). Center of attention: Spatial position affects quantity judgments and product preference. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/mn24r

Vanunu, Y., Urminsky, O.,& Bartels, B. (Working Paper). Coping with complexity: A selective sampling account of how people form consideration sets of product bundles. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/5t6cv

Vanunu, Y., Zhang, G. & Urminsky, O. (in prep.). The quantity-discount fallacy.

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