YL Ye LiUCR School of Business

Behavioral economics | decision science | AI and people

Ye Li

Associate Professor of Management and Marketing, UCR School of Business

I study how people make decisions across time, emotion, consumer contexts, organizations, and human-AI interactions.

Research Publications BEDLab
Ye Li
Behavioral Economics and Decision-making Lab Founder and director

University of California, Riverside School of Business

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About

Research on decisions as people actually make them.

My research examines judgment and decision-making through experiments, behavioral theory, text analysis, field data, and collaborations with students in BEDLab.

Much of this work asks why people behave more or less patiently, how emotions and experience affect decisions, how people interpret time and newness, and how AI can support or distort human judgment.

Current projects span AI and decision making, time preference, consumer behavior, organizational behavior, and the incidental role of time in how people evaluate options.

Research statement (2021)

Judgment and decision-making Behavioral economics Consumer behavior AI and decision making

Publications

Recent Publications

  1. Li, Ye, Cade Massey, and George Wu. (2025). Learning to detect change: an experimental investigation. Experimental Economics, 1-26.

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  2. Yueh, Lim, Ye Li, and Rasam Dorri. (2025). Balancing speed and experience: the cognitive and affective impacts of playback acceleration in digital media consumption. Frontiers in Psychology.

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  3. Mansell, Wade S., Ye Li, and David Hardisty. (2024). Assessing patience and predictivity validity for mixed sign intertemporal choices. Judgment and Decision Making, 19(e30).

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  4. Bartels, Daniel M., Ye Li, and Soaham Bharti. (2023). How well do laboratory-derived estimates of time preference predict real-world behavior? Comparisons to four benchmarks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 152(9), 2651-2665.

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  5. Li, Ye, Antonia Krefeld-Schwalb, Daniel Wall, Eric J. Johnson, Olivier Toubia, and Daniel M. Bartels. (2022). The More You Ask, the Less You Get: When Additional Questions Hurt External Validity. Journal of Marketing Research, 59(5), 963-982.

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  6. Jie, Yun and Ye Li. (2022). Chronological Cues and Consumers' Preference for Mere Newness. Journal of Retailing, 98(3), 527-541.

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Open CV All papers

Most Influential Work

From Google Scholar as of July 2026.

  1. Lerner, Jennifer S., Ye Li, Piercarlo Valdesolo, and Karim Kassam. (2015). Emotion and Decision Making. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 799-823.

    4,939 citations
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  2. Li, Ye, Eric J. Johnson, and Lisa Zaval. (2011). Local Warming: Daily Temperature Deviation Affects Beliefs and Concern about Climate Change. Psychological Science, 22(4), 454-459.

    595 citations
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  3. Lerner, Jennifer S., Ye Li, and Elke U. Weber. (2013). The Financial Cost of Sadness. Psychological Science, 24(1), 72-79.

    454 citations
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  4. Li, Ye, Martine Baldassi, Eric J. Johnson, and Elke U. Weber. (2013). Complementary Cognitive Capabilities, Economic Decisions, and Aging. Psychology and Aging, 28(3), 595-613.

    329 citations
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  5. DeSteno, David, Ye Li, Leah Dickens, and Jennifer S. Lerner. (2014). Gratitude: A Tool for Reducing Economic Impatience. Psychological Science, 25(6), 1262-1267.

    289 citations
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  6. Li, Ye, Jie Gao, Zeynep Enkavi, Lisa Zaval, Elke U. Weber, and Eric J. Johnson. (2015). Sound credit scores and financial decisions despite cognitive aging. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(1), 65-69.

    191 citations
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Google Scholar Profile

CV

Curriculum Vitae

Use the embedded version for quick reference, or download the PDF directly.

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Teaching and Mentoring

Decision science in the classroom and the lab.

Ye Li teaching in a UCR classroom

BEDLab

BEDLab trains undergraduate, masters, and doctoral students to understand scientific papers, design studies, analyze data, and communicate behavioral research.

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Recognition

Awards

Poets&Quants Top 40 Under 40

Selected as one of the 2020 Best 40 Under 40 Professors.

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Golden Apple Teaching Awards

Best Undergraduate Elective in 2017 and 2014; Best Graduate Elective in 2022.

Award winners

Speaking and Media

Public scholarship and selected coverage.

Selected public-facing talks, profiles, and press highlights connected to my research and teaching.

Poets&Quants

2020 Best 40 Under 40 Professors profile

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TEDx

TEDxUCR talk on decisions and time

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Selected press highlights

Research coverage has included outlets listed in my CV such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, TIME, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Bloomberg, Science Daily, U.S. News & World Report, and Fast Company.

Contact

Ye Li

Associate Professor of Management and Marketing
School of Business, University of California, Riverside

Prospective students interested in research opportunities should apply through BEDLab rather than emailing directly.

LinkedIn Google Scholar Prospective Students BEDLab Instagram School of Business Building 404, UC Riverside 900 University Avenue, Riverside, CA 92521