Professor Zakary Tormala is an experimental social and consumer psychologist who works in the areas of attitudes, persuasion, and social influence. At a general level, his research on these topics has a fundamental goal of shedding light on the factors and processes that open and close attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to change. In exploring these issues, he seeks to simultaneously advance basic psychological theory and uncover new and important phenomena -- and potentially powerful strategies -- relevant to predicting and influencing social and consumer behavior.

Professor Tormala received a BA in Psychology from Arizona State University in the fall of 1996 and went on to earn his PhD in Social Psychology from Ohio State University in 2003. From 2003-2007, Professor Tormala served as Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at Indiana University, joining the Stanford GSB in the summer of 2007 as Associate Professor of Marketing. At Stanford, he teaches courses on Consumer Behavior and Persuasion.

Professor Tormala has published numerous articles in leading psychology and marketing journals, including Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and Psychological Science. For his contribution to scholarly research in marketing and consumer behavior, he received the Society for Consumer Psychology's Early Career Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution in 2008 and was named to the Marketing Science Institute's list of Young Scholars in 2009.