New Mendoza Behavioral Lab enhances research potential

The Mendoza Behavioral Lab uses eye-tracking glasses in some research. (Photo by Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame)

The Mendoza Behavioral Lab, a dedicated research center designed for examining human behavior as it relates to business, opened at the start of the 2025-26 academic year.

The new lab — located on the lower level of Mendoza in the former Café Commons space — features multiple rooms configured for studies involving human subjects. Letecia McKinney, the senior behavioral research program director, said the expanded facility will enhance Mendoza’s tradition of thought leadership in fields ranging from marketing and analytics to management, accounting and organizational behavior.

Letecia McKinney

“The totality of the space and our ability to expand our reach opens up a wide world of possibilities that we just didn’t have before,” said McKinney.

The Behavioral Lab is part of an ambitious expansion plan at Mendoza called “Building the Good in Business.” Other improvements include a new Trading Room off the main atrium and a significant 28,000-square-foot North Addition scheduled to open in fall 2026.

McKinney said planning for the new Behavioral Lab began shortly after she began managing the lab in 2018. She spoke with faculty to learn their needs, studied similar spaces as a benchmark and submitted funding proposals to leadership over several years.

The new lab is staffed by six undergraduate student research assistants as before, but another six are on call as needed. There is a staff research assistant and graduate student to help with lab operations, data collection and special projects.

Participants are greeted in a new waiting room that has screens to deliver instructions, training or debriefings. A conference room features ceiling-mounted RoboFLIP cameras that can record the reactions of everyone in the room. The 36-seat computer lab can also be used for flexible team-based research. Four team rooms feature cameras and video screens.

Biometric devices detect galvanic skin response, where a sensor on the wrist and electrodes at the fingertips measure physiological responses to different stimuli on a computer screen. (Photo by Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame)

Two biometric rooms feature screen-based eye tracking that can, for instance, tell the researcher what stimuli and product placement receive the most attention. Eye tracking and facial expression analysis can be combined with galvanic skin response, where a sensor on the wrist and electrodes at the fingertips measure physiological responses to different stimuli on a computer screen.

There are also virtual reality headsets for immersive experiences and eye-tracking glasses that will allow faculty to extend their experiments outside the lab, such as testing marketing theories in a grocery or retail store.

“We also expect more faculty to take advantage of the lab as they begin to understand the valuable research resource it provides,” McKinney said.

With the new Behavioral Lab, John Costello, the John W. Berry Sr. Associate Professor of Marketing, said the new research potential is tremendous. The types and complexity of studies, as well as the ease and precision of data collection, will be a step up from the previous setup, he said.

The Behavioral Lab used to run out of available classrooms, working around scheduled classes. One of Costello’s previous studies illustrates the former limitations that the new lab eliminates.

He and colleague Chris Bechler, assistant professor of marketing, were running a series of experiments around “returnless returns,” which is where a company tells customers to just keep an unwanted or faulty product rather than returning it.

The complex study involved participants given a faulty pen with the ink cartridge removed. A student research assistant acting as a brand ambassador would provide a new working pen and tell participants either that they must return the faulty one or that they could keep that one as part of company policy.

Four team rooms in the Mendoza Behavioral Lab feature cameras and video screens that can be monitored remotely. (Photo by Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame)

“We had this interaction between a brand ambassador and a participant that was really tricky, because we were running people down the hallway to rooms we were able to book,” Costello said. “One of the rooms was attached to a maintenance closet, and some maintenance workers came in during the study.”

The Wall Street Journal and other business publications featured their study’s results, which found that not requiring returns can boost customer loyalty to the brand.

“So to have a dedicated space where we can just conduct this science is super important,” Costello said. “This controlled environment with state-of-the-art equipment, I think, is going to enhance the productivity of the researchers in our college going forward.”

Another Costello study had participants read about different food products to gauge their responses. The new space includes a lab kitchen to improve that kind of research.

“These immersive studies are a nice thing to pair with online studies that are stronger in other ways, but maybe lack some of that in-person realism, or kind of social richness that we can get in the lab,” Costello said.