Expertise:
Consumer Behavior, Intuitive Psychology, Belief Biases, Political Psychology, Morality, Social Influence, Personality TestsRandy Stein researches how people’s decisions, social beliefs, and economic understanding are shaped by how they determine what is real and what’s not. His current investigations include how political leanings impact how people weigh anecdotal versus scientific evidence, how trust in institutions relates to people’s reasoning ability, and why people value products that are verified to be ineffective or inauthentic. He has also examined why people are attracted to shoddy personality tests and why pseudoscientific ideas proliferate among individuals and businesses. Prior to joining the faculty of Cal Poly Pomona, he worked at Lieberman Research Worldwide where he executed advanced analytics on a wide range of studies for several Fortune 500 companies.
Selected Publications:
- “Hearing from Both Sides: Differences Between Liberal and Conservative Attitudes Toward Scientific and Experiential Evidence,” Journal of Political Psychology, Oct. 27, 2020 (https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12706)
- With A.B. Swan, “Evaluating the Validity of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Theory: A Teaching Tool and Window into Intuitive Psychology,” Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2019
- With A.B. Swan, “Deeply Confusing: Conflating Difficulty With Deep Revelation on Personality Assessment,” Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1948550618766409, 2018
- With A. Swan, “How Accurate Are Personality Tests?” Scientific American, October 2018 (Originally posted on TheConversation.com)
- “’Trumping’ conformity: Urges towards conformity to ingroups and nonconformity to morally opposed outgroups,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 70, 34-40, 2017
- “How our morals might politically polarize just about anything,” TheConversation.com, March 5, 2017
- With L. Williams and L. Galguera-Garcia, “Beyond Construal: Specifying the Emotional Consequences of Psychological Distance and Abstract Construal,” Journal of Consumer Research, 40, 1123-1138, 2014
- “The Pull of the Group: Conscious Conflict and the Involuntary Tendency Towards Conformity,” Consciousness and Cognition, 22, 788-794, 2013
- With D.L. Hoffman and T.P. Novak, “The Digital Consumer,” The Routledge Companion To Digital Consumption (R. Belk and R. Llamas, eds., Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2012)
Interviews:
- “What’s the problem with the Myers-Briggs personality test?” People Who Read People: A Psychology Podcast, Oct. 8, 2024
- “Fact-Checks Make Audiences Suspicious,” Slate, “Hear Me Out Podcast,” Aug. 13, 2024
- “Readers trust journalists less when they debunk rather than confirm claims,” SF Gate, Aug. 6, 2024
- “Conservatives, not liberals, are more inclined to value feelings over facts, psychology study finds,” Salon, Jan. 18. 2021
- “Conservatives value personal stories more than liberals do when evaluating scientific evidence,” The Conversation, Nov. 12, 2020
- “Morality Polarization, Redshirting Kindergarteners, Comfort Zone,” Matt Townsend Show, BYU Radio, March 30, 2017
- “Randy Stein, Cal Poly Pomona – Personality Quizzes,” Academic Minute, WAMC Radio, Jan. 1, 2019
Education:
B.S., Computer Science, and B.A., Psychology, Stony Brook University
M.S., M.Phil. and Ph.D., Social Psychology, Yale University