Dr. Yonat Zwebner
עברית

Dr. Yonat Zwebner

Arison School of Business

Marketing

Research and Teaching Expertise

  • Sustainability and Environment
  • Social Psychology
  • Environmental Psychology
  • Decision-Making
  • Marketing
  • Yonat Zwebner is a tenured Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Arison School of Business, Reichman University. Prior to joining Reichman University, she was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. She has also held visiting appointments in the Marketing Departments at Columbia Business School, the University of Colorado Boulder, and the Wharton School. She holds a PhD in Marketing from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

    Her research examines social influences on consumer behavior, consumers’ sense of autonomy, environmental and prosocial behavior, and the psychological inferences people draw from faces. In one stream of her research, she explores how consumers respond to being observed while making decisions, and how such observation can threaten their sense of autonomy and free will. In related work, she examines how revealing the reasons behind prosocial decisions influences those decisions. In another stream of research, she investigates what can be inferred from people’s faces, including how social tags such as given names may be reflected in facial appearance, as well as broader questions concerning the links between facial features, social perception, and consumer behavior.

    Her research has been published in leading journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing Research, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and other top journals. Her work has received numerous awards and grants, including being named a finalist for the 2017 SESP Best Dissertation Award, receiving the MSI Young Scholar Award in 2024, and receiving the Arison School of Business Outstanding Researcher Award for 2026. Her research has also received substantial media attention, including coverage in the Wall Street Journal, the New York York Times, and Harvard Business Review. She is a member of the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Consumer Research.

    Yonat Zwebner teaches Marketing Management and Consumer Behavior. She completed her master’s thesis in Marketing at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, her MBA at Reichman University, and her LLB at Tel Aviv University.

  • Yagoda-Biran, Gony, Ran N. Nof, and Yonat Zwebner (2026), "Monitoring public reaction to an unnecessary earthquake early warning alert." Scientific Reports, 16.1, 4715


    Nof, Ran Novitsky, Gony Yagoda-Biran, and Yonat Zwebner. "The urgency-necessity earthquake alert trade-off: considering the public response factor." Natural Hazards 121.8 (2025): 8951-8973.


    Zwebner, Yonat, Moses Miller, Noa Grobgeld, Jacob Goldenberg, and Ruth Mayo (2024), “Can Names Change Facial Appearance?.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(30).


    Kim Nicole, Yonat Zwebner, Alixandra Barasch, and Rom Y. Schrift, (2023), "You Must Have a Preference: The Impact of No Preference Communication on Joint Decision Making". Journal of Marketing Research, 60(1), 52–71


    Zwebner Yonat, and Rom Y. Schrift (2020), "On My Own: The Aversion to Being Observed During the Preference-Construction Stage”, Journal of Consumer Research, 47(4), 475-499
    Selected media interviews and mentions: The Wall Street Journal, Behavioraleconomics.com


    Wertenbroch, K., Schrift, R. Y., Alba, J. W., Barasch, A., Bhattacharjee, A., Giesler, M., ... & Zwebner, Y. (2020). Autonomy in consumer choice. Marketing Letters, 31(4), 429-439


    Zwebner Yonat., Sellier, A. L., Rosenfeld, N., Goldenberg, J., & Mayo, R. (2017). We look like our names: The manifestation of name stereotypes in facial appearance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 112(4), 527

    Selected media: The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Daily Telegraph, The Times of London, The New York Times, Fox News


    Zwebner Yonat, Lee Leonard, and Goldenberg Jacob (2014), “The Temperature Premium: Warmer Temperatures Increase Product Valuations,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 24(2) 251-259

    Selected media interviews and mentions: HBR Newsletter, Salon, Pacific Standard

    This paper was chosen to be the “StatWatch” item in the May 2014 issue of Harvard Business Review


    Working papers and Manuscripts under review

    Segal, Shoshana, Zwebner Yonat, and Barasch Alixandra. "I’M Not Too Generous: the Implications of a Novel Moderator of the Better-Than-Average Effect." Manuscript in Preparation

    Goor Dafna and Zwebner Yonat, "Effortlessly green: when and why effort impacts environmentally friendly consumption." Working paper

    Jochen Hartmann, Verena Schönmüller, Yonat Zwebner, Jacob Goldenberg, and Oded Netzer: “We Look Like What We Like: Predicting Brand Followership from Profile Pictures”. Manuscript in Preparation

    Zwebner Yonat and Rom Y. Schrift, “The Objectivity Illusion of Ranking Procedures: How and Why Ranking Alleviates Decision Difficulty", Manuscript in Preparation

    Zwebner Yonat, Robert Mislavsky, and Deborah Small, “Justified Selfishness: Explaining Donation Decisions Reduces Donations.” Manuscript in Preparation

    Zwebner Yonat, Schrift Rom, Shoshana Segal, and Shalena Srna, "The Downside of Doing Good”: People are less forgiving of nonprofits than for-profits after transgressing". Manuscript in Preparation

    Zwebner Yonat, Jacob Goldenberg, and Ruth Mayo, “Would You Trust Me? The Social Impact of Face-Name Congruency,” Data collection in progress