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T homas Kramer wants to know more about you than you may know about yourself — all in the spirit of making the world a better place. As an associate dean and professor of marketing in the UCR School of Business, Kramer’s research explores the intersection between behavioral psychology and marketing, and his findings are as revealing as they are fascinating.

Consider schadenfreude, a German term that means taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. Kramer has found ways to harness this rather dark sentiment to raise more money for charities. He has also investigated how we respond when asked to share products with strangers; when it’s better to rent or own certain products; and how simple rituals, such as preparing coffee every morning, help curb loneliness and improve mental well-being.

Here, Kramer shares insights from some of his varied research studies and how his findings could be put into practice:

How did you become interested in consumer psychology?

I initially got interested during the first undergraduate marketing course I took at Baruch College in New York. My professor said, “You know, people are weird, and they do weird things.” So, I thought, let’s study their weirdness and see how we can use it for marketing purposes.

One weird thing is schadenfreude — pleasure derived from the misfortune of others. If a charity wants to use schadenfreude to raise funds, what guidelines should it follow?

In past studies, schadenfreude has been looked at as happiness arising when you observe bad things happening to deserving others. What we found is that inflicting pain can also arouse schadenfreude, and that schadenfreude increases donations. But for that to happen, the pain that’s inflicted has to be mild. It cannot be something severe. In terms of fundraising events, it can be something like dunk tanks, where people get dunked in water. Also, in the fundraising context, the misfortune has to be on a disliked person. If it’s a fundraiser for UCR, it could be disliked professors. It has to be someone who’s deserving of whatever is coming to them.

You recently completed a study about sharing consumable products with strangers. One finding was that when U.S. hotel managers switched from offering small, single-use bottles of shampoo to larger, refillable dispensers shared by multiple guests, the hotel guests might end up using greater volumes of shampoo. What prompted this research, and why would people use more shampoo when it comes from a larger, refillable container?

A lot of my research is based on observations, and I noticed that when I was staying in Marriott Hotels, they had changed from the individual bottles of toiletries to these wall-mounted, shared ones. I was wondering if doing that would have any kind of effect on consumers because all our hotels were moving in that direction for sustainability.

It turns out that whether we share these public goods with strangers versus friends makes a difference. If I share with strangers, then I don’t identify with the product as much anymore. And we know that the less someone identifies with something, the less efficacious they believe it to be. So, this lower identification that derives from sharing with strangers leads to perceptions of low efficacy of the toiletries, like hand sanitizer or shampoo. Since I believe it doesn’t work as well, I will use more of it to make up for this perceived lower efficacy.

In response to the COVID pandemic, UCR facility managers placed hand sanitizer dispensers with UCR logos on the labels at building entrances and in restrooms. Why was it important for the labels to include the logos?

This is tied in with the idea that sharing with strangers lowers identification with the product. So, what can we do if sharing products lowers identification? One way to re-establish identification with the product is to include a logo. The UCR logo, for example, makes me identify with the hand sanitizer as a member of the UCR community. So, even if I share it with strangers, I’m still identifying with it. I think it’s efficacious, and I don’t need to use as much.

I go to a rock concert and am so impressed that I decide I want to learn how to play the electric guitar. But I need a guitar. Am I better off renting or buying one?

Another study of mine looked at products, like a guitar, where you have to learn the skill to play it. It turns out, whether people start as renters or buyers, they compare themselves to others like them. So, a renter compares himself to other renters, but a buyer compares himself to other buyers. So, if I’m a buyer, I know that other buyers tend to be highly skilled, which makes me feel less skilled. I expect it’s going to take me way longer to master the guitar, and if it takes me longer, then I become less committed to actually using it. Whereas for renters, I compare myself to other renters. Renters have lower skill levels on average, so I feel better about myself. I expect to master the guitar faster, and then I become more committed to using the guitar and practicing.

You did another study that found that simple rituals, such as how someone makes tea or coffee each morning, help combat loneliness. How so?

We know loneliness is a big crisis and relates to mental health and suicide; feeling lonely is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. We also know that one reason people feel lonely is that they perceive their lives to be meaningless. So, we were looking at what we could do that can provide meaning in people’s lives. We weren’t looking at marketing implications. This is about public policy implications.

It turns out that these mundane rituals can provide meaning, so the lives of lonely people become meaningful again, and that makes them feel less lonely. It could just be how you make your coffee in the morning, or how you prepare your tea — the steps you take, how often you stir, adding the sugar, then the milk — anything that you create yourself. It really should have no effect, but because people imbue these steps with meaning, it helps them overcome loneliness, or at least reduces it.