Ricardo Neuner, MA
DFG Research Project (run-time 2016-2022) in the context of the Priority Programm «Experience and Expectation. Historical Foundations of Economic Behaviour.»
Ph.D.-Project: The Shaping of Consumer Minds. A History of Behavior Engineering in American Consumer Psychology, 1930-1990. (working title)
My PhD-Project examines how psychologist and social researchers influenced consumer psychology. Their psychoanalytical, gestalpsychological and since the 1960s cognitive approaches not only shaped american consumer culture. On an academic level they also challenged rational modells of economic behavior. A result of this challenge was the rise of Behavioral Economics, which used psychological theories to gain back epistemological controll over the agent of »economic standard theory« which turned out to be irrational. My work is following the theoretical imports of eurpean migrants from advertising and marketing and its development into an independent academic subdiscipline called Consumer Behavior Research. Their cognitive models which analyzed economic actions on the level of individual thought processes appeared no longer as the anti-thesis of economic rationality, but rather an empirical advance of the dominant «micro-foundation» of economic theory in the 1980s. Anomalies and problems in economic behavior became psychological problems which could be resolved by cogntive marketing techniques.
Research Interests
The Ph.D.-Project is my experiment to combine history of psychology with social and economic history.
My additional research interests are:
- history of knowledge and science in the 20th century
- social and cultural history of the USA, Europe and South Africa
- theories and methods of historical research
February-April 2020
Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, Duke University, North Carolina.
February-April 2019
Northwestern University Archives, Evanston Illinois; Michigan University Archives, Ann Arbor, Michigan; Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, Duke University, North Carolina, Hagley Collections, Wilmington, Delaware.
28.02.2020 @ DHI Washington
A Great Persuasion? The Career of Motivation Research, 1930-1970.
23.01.2020 @ University Basel, Chair of Modern History, Cooperative Meeting of Economic History Konstanz, Zurich and Basel
Die Große Verführung? Zur Karriere der Motivforschung, 1930-1970.
29.11.2019 @ Universiy Erfurt, Max-Weber-Kolleg, Workshop History of Knowledge,
Die Vermessung des Verbrauchers und die Steuerung von Irrationalität. Der Konsument in der amerikanischen Verhaltensforschung seit 1930.
08.05.2018 @ University Zurich, Research Center for Social and Economic History, Zurich-Konstanz Workshop
Shaping the Mind for the Market. Eine Geschichte psychologischen Wissens vom Marketing zur Verhaltensökonomie.
28.09.2017 @ University Goettingen, Doctoral Workshop DFG Priority Programm »Experience and Expectation«
(Ir)rationalität im Experiment. Das Wissen der Verhaltensökonomie – Vom Experimentalsystem zur Steuerungstechnik.
20.06.2017 @ University Zurich, Research Center for Social and Economic History, Zürich-Konstanz-Workshop
Der ökonomische Mensch im Labor. Eine Denkstilanalyse der Behavioral Economics.
03.-04.2020
Visiting Research Fellow at the History Department, Duke University, North Carolina
03.-04.2020
Doctoral Scholarship German Historical Institute Washington, DC
- since 2017
Academic Staff in the Priority Programme of the DFG «Expectation & Experience. Historical Foundations of Economic Behaviour»
- 2016-2017
Scholar of the Center of Excellence «Cultural Foundations of Social Integration» for the Transition into the Doctoral Phase, as well as Research Assistant for the Chair of Prof. Dr. Laura Rischbieter
- 2013–2017
Student of the Masterprogramme of the Center of Excellence «Studies in European Culture» at the University of Konstanz and the University of Pretoria, South Africa
- 2009–2013
Bachelor of Arts in History, Geography and Philosophy at the University of Münster and Zurich
Awards and Grants
2020
Alvin Achenbaum Travel Grant, Duke University Library.
2017
Max-Dessoir-Award of the German Psychological Society (DGPs) for outstanding papers concerning the history of psychology for the master thesis Schimpansen im Test. Die Geschichte der Intelligenzprüfungen Wolfgang Köhlers auf Teneriffa 1913-1920.
2014
DAAD Exchange Scholarship for a Semester at the University of Pretoria.
2013
Essay Award of the Centre for Philosophy of Science, Münster (ZfW) for the essay Geschichtsschreibung im postideologischen Zeitalter. Das Ende der Ideologie als Phantasma.