Michael Platt

Michael Platt
  • James S. Riepe University Professor
  • Professor of Marketing
  • Professor of Psychology
  • Professor of Neuroscience

Contact Information

  • office Address:

    745 Jon M. Huntsman Hall
    3730 Walnut Street
    University of Pennsylvania
    Philadelphia, PA 19104-6304

Links: Innovative Thinking: Using Neuroscience to get Out-of-the-Box Ideas

Overview

Michael Platt has been selected as the sixteenth Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor, effective July 1, 2015.
Platt, a neuroscientist whose work focuses on the brain’s decision-making processes, has appointments in the Department of Neuroscience in the Perelman School of Medicine, the Department of Psychology in the School of Arts and Sciences, and the Department of Marketing in the Wharton School.
Platt has served as Professor of Neurobiology, Director of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences and Director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University. Organizations such as the National Foundation, the Klingenstein Foundation, the McDonnell Foundation and the Department of Defense have supported his research, and he has been recognized in the New York Times, the Washington post, the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, A`BC, BBC and PBS.
Platt has also served as the President of the Society for Neuroeconomics. He holds a PhD in Biological Anthropology from Penn, and a BA in Biological Anthropology from Yale.
 
VIDEOS (SELECTED)
“How We Decide: The New Science of Neuroeconomics,” Penn Arts & Sciences 60-second Lectures, April 27, 2016
“Why Friendship Is One of Our Most Basic Needs,” Huffington Post, February 24, 2016
“Brain Power,” World Economic Forum, February 23, 2016
“This Is Your Brain on Decision-making,” Knowledge@Wharton, October 29, 2015
“Primates of the Caribbean,” ARTE Network, France, 2013
“The NeuroEconomics of Innovation,” California Academy of Sciences, April 25, 2013
“The Science of Friendship,” Ignite Philly, April 27, 2016
“Peacocks, Eye Tracking, and the Brains Behind Decisions,” Penn Current, March 29, 2017
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Research

  • Simone D'Ambrogio, Noah Werksman, Michael Platt, Elizabeth Johnson (2023), How Celebrity Status and Gaze Direction in Ads Drive Visual Attention to Shape Consumer Decisions, Psychology & Marketing, 40 (4), pp. 723-734.

    Abstract: Marketers have long used celebrity endorsement to help viewers build strong brand-product associations. Celebrity endorsements increase brand awareness and recall, but how celebrity endorsements shape the decision process remains unclear. A wealth of research indicates that people tend to follow someone else's gaze, yet its effects in advertisements have been largely unexplored. We recruited 77 participants to investigate the effect of celebrities and gaze-cueing in advertisements on both gaze behavior and binary choices. We combined computational modeling with eye-tracking and pupillometry to identify which internal components of processing are affected by celebrity endorsement. We found that gaze-cueing and celebrity endorsement influence gaze allocation and option selection. Further, results from computational modeling, eye-tracking, and pupillometry revealed that the effect of celebrity endorsement on decisions can be explained as an offset in the starting point of an evidence accumulation process as well as changes in the rate of accumulation, thereby biasing choice.

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Latest Research

Simone D'Ambrogio, Noah Werksman, Michael Platt, Elizabeth Johnson (2023), How Celebrity Status and Gaze Direction in Ads Drive Visual Attention to Shape Consumer Decisions, Psychology & Marketing, 40 (4), pp. 723-734.
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In the News

Brainwaves to Breakthroughs: Foster a Creative Culture

Wharton's Michael Platt offers neuroscience-based strategies to boost creativity in this Nano Tool for Leaders.…Read More

Knowledge at Wharton - 6/3/2025
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Wharton Stories

A blue graphic with various political images such as raised hands, scales, and person speaking at a podium.What Neuroscience Can Tell Us About Political Advertising

One of the big stories out of the 2020 election cycle is the amount  Democratic presidential candidates have spent on political advertising. Michael Bloomberg has reportedly spent more than $410 million on campaign ads, and has since dropped out of the race, whereas former Vice President Joe Biden has only…

Wharton Stories - 03/10/2020
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