Smeesters, Dirk

Dr. Dirk Smeesters

Department of Marketing Management
Rotterdam School of Management
Erasmus University
P.O.Box 1738
3000 DR Rotterdam
The Netherlands

Room: T10-19
Phone: +31 10 408 2952
Fax. +31 10 408 9011
E-mail: DSmeesters@rsm.nl

Career

Associate Professor of Marketing, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (2007 – ...)

Assistant Professor of Marketing, Tilburg University (2002 – 2007)

Education

2003 Ph.D. in Psychology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Major: Social Psychology
Dissertation: “On the Malleability of Cooperative Behavior: Bridging Influences of Primed Cognitive Concepts and Social Value Orientation” ” Chairs: Eddy Van Avermaet and Luk Warlop

1997 Licentiaat (M.A) in de Psychologie, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Major: Social Psychology, Minor: Psychofysiology (with High Distinction)

1994 Kandidaat (B.A.) in de Psychologie, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Research interests

Consumer decision making; brand relationships; advertising effects on the self; social comparison; automaticity and non-conscious processes; mortality salience; self-construal; cooperation and competition; social value orientation

Awards and honors

2008 Faculty Fellow, Association for Consumer Research – Doctoral Consortium, San Francisco

2007 Best Course Award for the course Academic Skills in Marketing, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Tilburg University.

2007 Faculty Fellow, European Association for Consumer Research Conference – Doctoral Consortium, Milan (Italy)

2004 – 2006 Marie Curie Fellowship from the European Community (€ 132,114)

2003 Best Course Award for the course Seminar International Business, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Tilburg University.

1998 Student Fellow, European Association of Experimental Social Psychology Summer School Program

1997 Graduated with High Distinction from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Publications

Smeesters, Dirk, Thomas Mussweiler, and Naomi Mandel (in press), “The effects of thin and heavy media images on overweight and underweight consumers: Social comparison processes and behavioral implications,” Journal of Consumer Research.
Smeesters, Dirk, S. Christian Wheeler, and Aaron C. Kay (in press), “Indirect prime-to-behavior effects: The role of perceptions of the self, others, and situations in connecting primed constructs to social behavior,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology.
Liu, Jia, and Dirk Smeesters (in press), “Have you seen the news today? The effect of death-related media contexts on brand preferences,” Journal of Marketing Research.
Lam, Stephanie Renee, Kimberly Rios Morrison, and Dirk Smeesters (2009), “Gender, intimacy, and risky sex: A Terror Management Account,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Smeesters, Dirk, S. Christian Wheeler, and Aaron C. Kay (2009), “The role of interpersonal perceptions in the prime-to-behavior pathway,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96,395-414.
Smeesters, Dirk, Vincent Y. Yzerbyt, Olivier Corneille, and Luk Warlop (2009), “When do primes prime? The moderating role of the self-concept in individuals’ susceptibility to priming effects on social behavior,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 211-216.
Mandel, Naomi, and Dirk Smeesters (2008), "The sweet escape: Effects of mortality salience on consumption quantities for high- and low self-esteem consumers," Journal of Consumer Research, 35 (August), 309-323.
Kay, Aaron C., S. Christian Wheeler, and Dirk Smeesters (2008), “Situationally-embedded social cognition: The interplay of construct accessibility, situational construal, and person perception”, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44 (March), 275-291.
Lerouge, Davy, and Dirk Smeesters (2008), “Knowledge activation after information encoding: Implications of trait priming on person judgment,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44 (March), 429-436.
Morrison, Kimberly Rios, S. Christian Wheeler, and Dirk Smeesters (2007), “Significant Other primes and behavior: Motivation to respond to social cues moderates pursuit of prime-induced goals,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33 (December), 1661-1674.
Smeesters, Dirk, and Naomi Mandel (2006), “Positive and negative media image effects on the self,” Journal of Consumer Research, 32 (March), 576-582.
Smeesters, Dirk, Luk Warlop, Eddy Van Avermaet, Olivier Corneille, and Vincent Yzerbyt (2003), “Do not prime hawks with doves: The interplay of construct activation and consistency of social value orientation on cooperative behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84 (May), 972-987.
Vanbeselaere, Norbert, Filip Boen, and Dirk Smeesters (2003), “Tokenism also works with groups as tokens: The impact of group openness and qualification on reactions to membership in a low-status group,” Group Dynamics, 7 (June), 104-121.
Smeesters, Dirk, Luk Warlop, Gert Cornelissen, and Piet Vanden Abeele (2003), “Consumer motivation to recycle when recycling is mandatory: Two exploratory studies,” Tijdschrift voor Economie en Management, 48 (3), 451-468.
Hermans, Dirk, Dirk Smeesters, Jan De Houwer, and Paul Eelen (2002), “Affective priming for associatively unrelated primes and targets,” Psychologica Belgica, 42 (Autumn), 191-212.
Warlop, Luk, Dirk Smeesters, and Piet Vanden Abeele, P. (2001), “On selling brotherhood like soap: Influencing everyday disposal decisions,” in The why of consumption, ed. S. Ratneshwar, David Glen Mick, and Cynthia Huffman, London: Routledge, 197-215.

Conference presentations

“Why ‘fast food’ triggers ‘McDonalds’ and ‘Burgerking’ triggers ‘fast food’: Antecedents of brand typicality and the relationship between category and brand”, Association for Consumer Research Conference, San Francisco, October 2008.

“Effect of thin and heavy media images on underweight and overweight consumers”, Association for Consumer Research Conference, Memphis, October 2007.

“Finding a job and managing your career”, presentation to be held at the Doctorial Consortium of the European Association for Consumer Research conference, Milan (Italy), July 2007 (invited presentation).

“It’s a matter of focus: Situational and Individual difference moderators of prime-to-behavior mechanisms”, special session presentation, Society for Consumer Psychology Conference, Las Vegas, February 2007.

“Personal goals and self-monitoring moderate the effects of relationship primes”, Society for Personality and Social Psychology Conference, Memphis, January 2007.

“Non-conscious effects on economic decisions: The role of perceptual construals in mediating priming-to-behavior effect”, special session presentation, Association for Consumer Research Conference, Orlando, September 2006.

“Dying to consume: The effects of mortality salience on consumption”, special session presentation, Association for Consumer Research Conference, Orlando, September 2006.

“Interpersonal and situational construals as mediation of behavioral priming effects”, special session presentation, Society for Personality and Social Psychology Conference, Palm Springs, January 2006.

“The mirror has two faces: Positive and negative media image effects on the self”, Association for Consumer Research Conference, San Antonio, September-October 2005.

“Who am I playing with? Interpretative thinking and automatic effects of context for impression formation in a prisoner’s dilemma game”, special session presentation, Association for Consumer Research Conference, Toronto, October 2003.

“About prisoners and dictators: The role of subliminally presented stereotype primes and social value orientation in shaping cooperative behavior”, special session presentation, Association for Consumer Research Conference, Toronto, October 2003.

“The effects of stereotype primes and social value orientation on cooperative behavior in unilateral and mutual dependence situations”, special session presentation, European Association of Experimental Social Psychology Conference, San Sebastian (Spain), June 2002.

“A sneaky way of selling brotherhood to some: The pros and cons of unobtrusively priming pro-social behavior”, European Marketing Academy Conference, Braga (Portugal), May 2002.

“The role of dispositions and situational features in the emergence of cooperative behavior in interdependence situations”, Social Cognition Network Conference, Houffallize (Belgium), September 2001.

“Priming might and morality in give-some games”, Subjective Probability and Utility Decision Making Conference, Amsterdam (the Netherlands), August 2001.
“Exploring the recycling dilemma: Consumer motivation and experiences in mandatory garbage recycling programs”
• European Marketing Academy Conference, Berlin (Germany), May 1999
• Subjective Probability and Utility Decision Making Conference, Mannheim (Germany), August 1999.

“Behavioral and emotional responses upon a disadvantaged situation”, Belgian Psychological Society Conference, Brussels (Belgium), May 1998.

“Affective priming using a colour-naming task”, Conference of Social Psychology, Konstanz (Germany), June 1997.

“Affective priming with associatively unrelated primes and targets using different tasks”,
• Belgian Psychological Society Conference, Brussels (Belgium), April 1997
• Conference of Social Psychology, Konstanz (Germany), June 1997.

Invited presentations

London Business School (planned, March 2010)
Maastricht University (planned, November 2009)
University of Amsterdam (planned, November 2009)
University of Groningen (November 2008)
Tilburg University (Psychology department, September 2008)
Aston Business School (February 2008)
Monash University (January 2008)
University of Waikato (January 2008)
Erasmus University of Rotterdam (April 2007)
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (March 2007)
Utrecht University (Psychology department, January 2007)
University of Cologne (Psychology department, August 2006)
Kurt Lewin Institute (June 2006)
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Marketing Winter camp, December 2005)
Tilburg University (Psychology department, December 2005)
Stanford University (June 2005)
Wageningen University (April 2005)
Arizona State University (March 2005)
Tilburg University (Marketing Winter camp, December 2002).
Tilburg University (Psychology department, October 2002)
Erasmus University of Rotterdam (December 2002)
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Marketing Winter camp, December 2001)

Teaching experience

Academic Skills in Marketing 2002 – 2007
Consumer Behavior and Marketing Action 2002 – 2007
Experimental Research 2005 – 2007
Seminar International Business 2003 – 2004

Experimental Methods 2007 – …
Marketing Management 2007 – …

Academic Service

Editorial Review Board

Journal of Consumer Research, 2009 - ….

Ad-hoc reviewing

Applied Cognitive Psychology
British Journal of Social Psychology
European Journal of Social Psychology
Experimental Psychology
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Personality and Individual Differences
Self and Identity
Social Cognition
Social Psychological and Personality Science

Association for Consumer Research Conference, 2007, 2009
European Marketing Academy Conference, 2005-2009
La Londe International Research Seminar in Marketing, 2005, 2007
Society for Consumer Psychology Conference, 2007-2009

Doctoral committees
Steven Sweldens, committee member, Erasmus University, June 2009
Jia Liu, co-chair, Tilburg University, June 2008
Barbara Briers, committee member, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, June 2006

University service
TRecruiting coordinator, Department of Marketing Management, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, 2009-2010
Tutorial coordinator for doctoral students, Tilburg University, 2006 – 2007
Seminar coordinator Marketing department, Tilburg University, 2006 – 2007
Member of the Research Facilities & CentER Court group, Tilburg University, 2004 – 2005

Professional Affiliations

American Marketing Association (AMA)
American Psychological Association (APA)
Associatie Sociaal Psychologische Onderzoekers (ASPO)
Association for Consumer Research (ACR)
Association for Psychological Science (APS)
European Association of Experimental Social Psychology (EAESP)
European Marketing Academy (EMAC)
International Social Cognition Netwerk (ISCON)
Society for Consumer Psychology (SCP)
Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP)

Faculty & Research