Best Prof: Joshua Ackerman

Joshua Ackerman

Assistant Professor of Marketing

Age: 33

Institution: MIT Sloan School of Management

Hometown: Norfolk, VA

Marital Status: Single

Children: None

Courses: Consumer Behavior

Education: Arizona State University, PhD, Social Psychology

Arizona State University, MA

Duke University, BA, Psychology & Anthropology

At Sloan Since: 2009

Before Sloan: Yale University

Fun Fact: “I enjoy photography and have had photos published in several books and calendars.”

Joshua Ackerman’s work applies an evolutionary perspective to issues of conscious and non-conscious social coordination in consumer behavior and other areas. Academic studies from Professor Ackerman look at the ways people coordinate with others cognitively (e.g., in self-regulation and goal pursuit), affectively (e.g., in the processing of emotional expression and bodily cues), and behaviorally (e.g., cooperation) within different interpersonal contexts. This summer, Professor Ackerman made news headlines in the Associated Press, The New York Times, Financial Times, and NPR for his study showing that what we touch unconsciously influences what we think.

Students Say:

Professor Ackerman’s classes are galloping adventures through the amusing, quirky, irrational bits of the human mind as it navigates consumption and marketing decisions. His amazing breadth of knowledge on consumer behavior and psychology unfurls relentlessly in every class, as he runs quirky in-class experiments, cites findings both recent and classic, and explains theory and practice with a mild-mannered yet gripping authority. The class material is so fascinating that it attracts an incredible amount of class participation and many, many ‘smaht’ questions – which he calmly answers, or parries, with signature wit. His class is destined to become a classic, and I’m glad I was there. — Lu-Fong Chua, MIT Sloan MBA Class of 2012

Joshua Ackerman is among “The World’s 40 Best B-School Profs Under the Age of 40“