# Lynn R. Kahle

Lynn R. Kahle (born 1950) is an American consumer psychologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Oregon's Lundquist College of Business. From 2018 to 2020 he taught at the Lubin School of Business, Pace University in New York as a visiting scholar and professor.

## Life

Kahle grew up in Hillsboro, Oregon, in the Portland metro area and graduated from Concordia College (later Concordia University) in Portland. He then graduated from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, with a master's degree. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska and subsequently worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. Kahle joined the University of Oregon in 1983 as a professor teaching in the College of Business. In 1990, he made an unsuccessful run to serve in the Oregon House of Representatives to represent District 43 as a Democrat.
He was the Academic Director of the Applied Information Management (AIM) program at the University of Oregon. He previously served as President of the Society for Consumer Psychology, which he represented on the American Psychological Association (APA) Council of Representatives from 2014 to 2019. He chaired the APA Membership Board in 2019.
Kahle developed the List of Values and has subsequently conducted research on values and lifestyles. He performed as founding academic director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center and has done extensive research in sports marketing. He has also studied consumption and sustainability, as well as consumption and religion. He served as Editor in Chief for the APA Handbook of Consumer Psychology.

## Work

Kahle has contributed to many concepts in consumer psychology, including: the match-up hypothesis, the role-relaxed consumer, the role of social values in consumption, attitude-behavior consistency, consumer thought processes, lifestyle marketing, stimulus condition self-selection, social media and sports fandom.
Kahle developed Social Adaptation theory, which maintains that people's cognitive life facilitates their functioning in their social environments. Communications is most effective when it emphasizes connections to a person's values, attitudes, and lifestyles. Sports marketing, for example, most deeply influences people whose lifestyle emphasizes sports. In social adaptation theory people actively attend to messages that inform their values. Values shape attitudes, which in turn guide behaviors. Social media have encouraged clustering of and interactions among people who share lifestyles and values. This theory has influenced work in marketing communication, global marketing, sports marketing, retailing, and consumer behaviour.

## Awards and honors

Kahle has won numerous awards, including the American Marketing Association Lifetime Achievement Award for the Consumer Behavior Special Interest Group, the Stotlar Award for the Sports Marketing Association, the Distinguished Career Contributions to the Scientific Understanding of Sports Business from the American Marketing Association Sports Special Interest Group, and the Stewart Distinguished Professor Award from the University of Oregon.