Time: 14:00-15:30 on Tuesday, Mar.11, 2025

Location: Room 624, Siyuan Faculty Building

Topic: The Happiness of Withholding Happiness

Speaker: Bowen Ruan, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa

Host: Yunlu Yin, Associate Professor, Fudan SoM

Abstract: In the Information Age, people consume an unprecedented amount of information daily. While prior research has predominantly focused on the consumption of tangible goods, little is known about how to better "consume" intangible (positive) information to enhance happiness. This research examines the consumption of information and proposes a seemingly counterintuitive strategy that allows people to derive more total happiness from self-relevant positive news—namely, delaying the disclosure of the news. In a series of controlled experiments, most of which involved real experiences, we found that participants randomly assigned to disclose positive news at a later time derived more total happiness from the news than participants randomly assigned to disclose the news immediately. However, when given a choice between delayed and immediate disclosure, most participants opted for the latter, erroneously predicting it to yield more happiness. The research offers insights into important and timely topics such as happiness, information consumption, oversharing, and privacy.

Bio: Bowen Ruan is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Iowa. His research revolves around happiness, exploring psychological processes that affect their decision-making about their own happiness, with an objective to enhance consumers’ subjective well-being. He employs research paradigms from the field of judgment and decision-making to investigate when and why consumers exhibit biases or make suboptimal decisions about happiness. The implications of his research extend to areas such as customer experience, gamification, and loyalty programs. His work has been published in Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Psychological Science.