Alumni and Friends

Notable Alumni | Aaron Reid Quantifies Consumer Emotional Response for Global Brands

Notable Alumni Award

Editor’s Note: The College of Arts & Sciences Notable Alumni Awards honor alumni for broad career accomplishments, commitment to community service, and valuable contributions to and the College of Arts & Sciences.

Aaron Reid ’03 M.S., ’06 Ph.D. Experimental Psychology

Aaron Reid is the CEO of , which he founded in 2007, taking his graduate research on how “physiological emotional responses can be combined with symbolic information to predict preferences” to create a behavioral science based research and technology firm that informs the brand, product and advertising strategies of global corporations.

“Sentient Decision Science, Inc. was created to bring the visionary advances from the behavioral sciences to the business community in a practical and accessible form in order to move global business forward,” he explains on .

“Our mission is to become the most sought after resource for behavioral insight by providing unrivaled business advantage to our clients and advancing human knowledge on the drivers of behavior.”

Headshot of Aaron Reid
Aaron Reid

Reid earned an M.S. and Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the College of Arts & Sciences at .

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“Dr. Reid founded Sentient Decision Science, Inc. to bring the visionary advances from the behavioral sciences to business in a practical and accessible format. Sentient builds behavioral science based technology that quantifies emotional response and improves sales forecast accuracy,” says his LinkedIn profile.

Reid is an expert in how emotion influences choice and the subconscious drivers of behavior. His publications include mathematical models of consumer irrationalities in top journals, such as the Journal of Experimental Psychology and the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. His landmark publication of “” (co-authored with Dr. Claudia González Vallejo, Professor of Psychology at ) was the first to quantify how emotion influences choice as a behavioral weighting mechanism.

Dr. Aaron Reid sitting at a desk
Dr. Aaron Reid

Under Reid’s direction, Sentient Decision Science has been named one of the Top 50 most innovative research firms in the world since 2016. Sentient is best know for developing technology that quantifies consumer emotional responses with brands, products, packaging and advertising. By building an automated behavioral science based research platform, including implicit associations, facial coding of emotion, eye-tracking and advanced choice methods, Reid believes human understanding of drivers of behavior can be accelerated, thereby increasing empathy for the human condition. Reid’s patent pending technology was recognized with the EXPLOR award in both 2011 and 2018 for being the most impactful application of technology in market research.

OHIO Memories

 

Dr. Aaron Reid and his wife outside their home in Athens
Aaron Reid and his wife at their apartment in The Plains
Dr. Reid and his mom in Athens
Aaron Reid and his mom at his small house near the bike path in Athens
Aaron Reid in his office in Porter Hall
“Also, a shot of me in my cubicle in Porter Hall. Interestingly, my cube mate (Paul Weiland), was the first person I hired to come work at Sentient!”
Aaron and his friends sit at a table
Aaron Reid having good conversation with friends at the bakery.
Tags:
Alumni
Department of Psychology
College of Arts and Sciences
Published
October 21, 2019
Author
Staff reports