Katherine Burson

Katherine Burson received her Phd in Marketing at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business in 2004 and is Assistant Professor of Marketing at Ross School of Business. Burson's research examines judgment and decision making in consumer behavior. She is specifically interested in consumers' accuracy in estimating their abilities, and how this affects their purchase decisions. This research is based on work that shows that people tend to be optimistic about their abilities relative to others when tasks are easy. This bias shifts to pessimism when the estimates are made about difficult tasks.

Her dissertation research shows how these two effects can make unskilled performers particularly inaccurate on easy tasks and skilled performers particularly inaccurate on hard tasks. She demonstrates that consumers' estimates about their relative abilities predict choice. Consumers may be influenced by the difficulty of a task, give overly optimistic or pessimistic estimates of ability, and purchase products that are appropriate for their estimated (but not actual) ability.