About
Dr Nicolette J. Sullivan ("Nikki") is an Assistant Professor of Marketing in LSE's Department of Management and a leading authority on the application of process tracing methods (eye tracking, mouse tracking, neuroimaging) to consumer research.
She co-organizes the Consumer Neuroscience Satellite Symposium for the Society for Neuroeconomics, where she also served a three-year term on the board. In 2025, she received its Early Career Award. Her research combines computational modeling, eye tracking, mouse tracking, and neuroimaging to determine how attention and the timing of information processing shape decisions, with work spanning dietary choice, intertemporal choice, social behavior, and consumer responses to nudges.
Her studies appear in prestigious journals including Nature Human Behaviour, Psychological Science, and the Journal of Marketing Research, and she has presented her work at MIT Sloan, Erasmus, Imperial College, and the University of Zurich, among others.
She works closely with industry as an expert in the application of process data to business problems, and has spoken at a number of industry events. She earned her PhD in Computation and Neural Systems from Caltech and an MA from the University of Chicago where she worked as a researcher in the Department of Economics.
She completed postdoctoral training at Duke University before joining LSE and previously was a Visiting Lecturer at the Wharton School. At LSE, she has taught Consumer Behaviour, Consumer Neuroscience, and Digital Marketing as well as workshops on data analytics and coding.
Dr Sullivan is a member of the Marketing Faculty Research Group.
Expertise
Consumer neuroscience; eye tracking; computational modelling; attention and decision processes; dietary and intertemporal choice; choice architecture; multi-methods in consumer research; neuroeconomics
Research
Dr Sullivan's research examines how the dynamics of attention and information processing shape value-based decisions. She uses computational modelling, eye tracking, and neuroimaging to trace the moment-by-moment processes that translate preferences into choices, connecting these process-level insights to real-world contexts including dietary self-control, intertemporal choice, nudges, prosocial behaviour, and digital consumer behaviour.
Attention and information processing
A central theme in her work is that how people process information, not just what they ultimately choose, predicts behaviour. Her research shows that dietary self-control depends on the speed with which healthfulness and tastiness attributes are processed, and that the latency and rate of information accumulation predict healthful choices more broadly. Related work examines how gaze transitions during search reverse the choice patterns predicted by standard intertemporal choice models.
Choice architecture and defaults
Dr Sullivan studies how defaults change the decision process itself, not just the final choice, showing that default options increase valuation and shift attention toward the default (the "golden halo" effect), and that sharing-promoting defaults can reduce consumer trust even as they offer minimal behavioural uplift.
Dietary and intertemporal choice
She has shown that indulgent food options can paradoxically promote disciplined dietary choices, and that amount and time exert independent influences on intertemporal choice.
Prosocial decision-making
Peer presence increases adolescents' prosocial behaviour by speeding their evaluation of outcomes for others.
Digital consumer behaviour
Her recent work examines the cognitive spillover effects of social media exposure on consumer attention, and how post attributes affect attention and recall.
Methods
She has written on best practices for using eye tracking in political choice research, created a framework for pre-registering eye-tracking studies, and reviewed three decades of process-tracing methods in decision-making.
Teaching
Engagement and impact
Dr Sullivan has worked with industry to apply insights from attention and decision-process research to real-world consumer behaviour, including recent engagements with IPG Mediabrands and Seedtag.
She welcomes opportunities for consultation, speaking, and applied collaboration with organizations interested in eye tracking, computational modelling, or the design of consumer-facing choice environments.
Dr Sullivan also co-organises the Consumer Neuroscience Satellite Symposium for the Society for Neuroeconomics, and formerly the Interdisciplinary Symposium on Decision Neuroscience, connecting academic and industry researchers working at the intersection of neuroscience and consumer behaviour.
Resources
Dr Sullivan has developed an open pre-registration template for eye-tracking studies, designed to help researchers plan and report eye-tracking data collection more transparently (available via OSF).
She has also written an introductory chapter on attention dynamics in consumer choice, covering the core methods and findings researchers can apply to behavioural and neuroscience-based studies of decision-making (in Neuroeconomics: Core Topics and Current Directions, Springer Nature).