Dr. Niklas Pivecka, BSc MSc

Applied Social Psychology and Consumer Research

Department of Psychology
University of Vienna
Universitätsstraße 7
A-1010 Vienna

Office: C0715 (NIG)

Email: niklas.pivecka@univie.ac.at

Appointments only by arrangement.

My main research interest are consumer behavior and decision making from a cognitive-ecological perspective. Specifically, I investigate how environmental factors shape the formation and persistence of food beliefs in individuals. This holistic approach allows for a deeper understanding of how the mind processes and responds to food information in different contexts. I did my masters at the University of Mannheim and joined the Soko-Lab in September 2020. 

Current position

University Assistant (Pre-Doc), University of Vienna, Austria 

Education

2020 – 2024
Doctoral Studies in Psychology, University of Vienna (Austria) 

2018 – 2020
MSc Psychology, University of Mannheim (Germany) 

2014 – 2018
BSc Psychology, University of Gießen (Germany) 

Selected publications

  • Kunz, S., Haasova, S., Pivecka, N., Schmidt, J., & Florack, A. (2023). Food Is All Around: How Contexts Create Misbeliefs About the Health–Taste Relationship. Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976231158288
  • Kunz, S., Pivecka, N., Dietachmayr, C., & Florack, A. (2024). Seeing is misbelieving: Consumers wrongly belief that unhealthy food tastes better when there is more of it. Appetite.
  • Pivecka, N., Kunz, S., & Florack, A. (2023). Social class differences in dietary intake are mediated by the relationship between health and taste: Findings from a cross-sectional and longitudinal study. Food Quality and Preferences, 109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2023.104914
  • Pivecka, N., Kunz, S., & Florack, A. (2024). From menus to misbeliefs: Absolute frequencies of healthy and tasty dishes predict the unhealthy = tasty belief in restaurants. Acta Psychologica, 250, 104509. doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2024.104509
  • Pivecka, N., Ratzinger R. A., and Florack, A. (2022). Emotions and virality: Social transmission of political messages on Twitter. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, Article 931921. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.931921
  • Pivecka, N., Ingendahl, M., McCaughey, L., & Vogel, T. (2024). Contingency inferences from base rates: A parsimonious strategy? Memory & Cognition. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-024-01567-y

Selected conferences

  • Pivecka, N., Kunz, S., and Florack, A. (2023, March 2–4). Hedonic sampling in food contexts: The persistence of food beliefs in reward-rich environments [Poster presentation]. Society for Consumer Psychology (SCP) Annual Conference 2023, San Juan, Puerto Rico.