Yael Zemack-Rugar

Dr. Yael Zemack-Rugar is Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Central Florida's College of Business. Her research explores goals and motivation at the intersection of emotions, particularly in self-regulation contexts involving tradeoffs between short-term desires and long-term goals.

Key research areas include:

• Behavior following subgoal success/failure in domains like dieting, saving, academics
• Role of guilt in prosocial behavior and consumer reactance
• Visualization effects on product complementarity

She developed validated scales measuring responses to goal failure/success that predict behavior better than existing measures. Her work has appeared in Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and Psychology & Marketing.

Honors include Research Incentive Award and Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award.