UT Haslam Marketing Professor Honored by Eminent International Body

Professor Garriy Shteynberg, who recently joined the Department of Marketing at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Haslam College of Business, was named a 2026 Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) fellow for his fundamental, field-shaping contributions to social and personality psychology. He will be recognized as a new fellow during SPSP’s February 2027 convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Shteynberg, who has been practicing social psychology for more than 20 years, beginning in graduate school and continuing across anthropology, psychology and business disciplines, characterizes the field as an ongoing collection of ideas, knowledge and facts, which practitioners absorb and try to enrich.

“I’m delighted to be recognized like this after all these years of work,” he says. “This field means a great deal to me, so knowing I have had an impact on it is a big honor.”

Research Focus: Understanding and Explaining Shared Attention

The main focus of Shteynberg’s research is answering a big question: What happens when people share attention? Exploring this issue involves attempting to explain and predict what people experience when they attend an event or otherwise share an occurrence with others and how that affects their emotions, motivations and behavior. Shteynberg and fellow researchers have discovered, among other findings, that when people experience something at the same time, it results in stronger memories and emotions for all involved. His research on the subject has appeared in Royal Society Open Science, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Applied Psychology, Nature Machine Intelligence, Cognitive Science and The Conversation, among many others.

“I’ve been trying to both theoretically describe this state of shared attention and also empirically measure and manipulate it,” he explains.

Moving into Marketing

After several years in UT’s Department of Psychology and Neuroscience in the College of Arts and Sciences, Shteynberg spent the 2025-2026 academic year working a joint psychology/marketing appointment. He joined Haslam’s marketing department full time this fall, finding the field appealing and his colleagues in the department welcoming.

“It’s an expression of the desire to grow and learn new things, work with new people and understand human behavior through a different lens,” he says of his change of college.

Another reason for his switch to marketing was his exposure to AI as a consumer product. As a psychologist, he was fascinated with how humans interact with it, and he feels strongly that research in this area could have profound implications.

“I am interested in how people form relationships with AI and what kind of well-being and productivity consequences this has,” Shteynberg explains. “When I talked to the leadership at Haslam about my interest in this, they were equally visionary and excited about what we can do in the space. So, it was a natural confluence of interests, excitement and vision around the idea of understanding AI and how humans will relate to it.”

Stephen L. Mangum, Haslam’s dean and Stokely Foundation Leadership Chair, describes Shteynberg’s idea for research on AI in consumerism as an exploration with potentially limitless possibilities.

“Haslam is excited to bring Garriy Shteynberg into the business fold,” Mangum says. “With his background in social psychology, Garriy’s approach to researching AI in a marketing context promises to be unique to the discipline, offering the college an exceptional opportunity to open new frontiers in business research. He also will teach our students social psychology’s applications in business, providing them with fresh insights.”

Bridging Disciplines in the Classroom

As Mangum notes, Shteynberg is also teaching marketing courses in his new position. For fall 2026, his course is a senior-level class focused on the social psychology of consumer behavior. While the subject matter mixes his two disciplines, he describes teaching mostly business students rather than psychology students a challenge, stressful and wonderful at the same time. He perceives business students as seeking educational tools and takeaways applicable to their careers. One of his goals is to teach them that the ability to understand why people do what they do is important to their success.

“I’m excited about bringing the deeper understanding of how humans work psychologically to business students and connecting it explicitly to what they can do with that knowledge,” he explains. “I want to go beyond the day-to-day trends that are constantly changing into a deeper understanding of psychological principles that will serve them across time.”

For Alex Zablah, head of the marketing department, Gerber/Taylor Distinguished Professor and Kinney Family Faculty Research Fellow, Shteynberg joins a small but influential group of social psychologists who have made their mark in marketing.

“That kind of disciplinary crossover benefits the field because Garriy arrives asking questions the marketing discipline has not thought to ask yet,” Zablah says. “He brings a unique perspective, and he does so at a moment when questions about how people relate to AI sit right at the center of consumer behavior. Garriy’s arrival elevates both our research and teaching, and his energy and optimism make him a natural fit for the culture we are trying to build.”

About the Society for Personality and Social Psychology

Founded in 1974, the SPSP is the world’s largest professional organization for personality and social psychologists, with over 7,500 members. The organization’s mission is to advance the science, teaching and application of personality and social psychology for the benefit of all people, and it serves its members through educational events, networking, research funding, publications and mentorship.

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Scott McNutt, business writer/publicist, [email protected]

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Scott McNutt

Business Writer/Publicist

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Haslam College of Business - UT Haslam Marketing Professor Honored by Eminent International Body