Third-Party Funding
Ongoing Projects at the MPIB
This overview presents the projects at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development currently supported by third-party funds. They are ordered alphabetically by the principal investigator's name.
Fingerprinting the Impact of Declining
Neuromodulation on Late-Life Memory
BrightFocus Foundation
2024–2026
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Martin Dahl (Center for Lifesoan Psychology)
This project spotlights previously understudied brain regions—tiny nuclei in the brainstem—that are the starting point of Alzheimer’s-related tau accumulation and investigates how their changes contribute to memory loss. Using innovative brain imaging techniques, blood-based biomarkers, and memory assessments collected over a decade from a large number of participants, this project improves our understanding of the time course of neural changes in later life and their mechanistic role in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s development.
Weather warnings: from EXtreme event Information to COMmunication and action (WEXICOM)
Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD) (German Meteorological Service)
2023–2027
Nadine Fleischhut (Center for Adaptive Rationality)
Effective communication of weather and climate forecasts is critical to mitigate risks and strengthen decision-making capabilities. The aim of WEXICOM is to promote anticipation and response in the face of weather and climate risks through improved warnings, impacts and climate risk communication. In four work packages, we will investigate the effective communication of uncertainties, risks and impacts in warnings and climate representations in a transdisciplinary manner. WEXICOM consists of the working groups Statistical Meteorology and the Disaster Research Unit of the FU Berlin as well as the Center for Adaptive Rationality at the MP| for Human Development and the Psychology of Sociotechnical Systems of the TU Braunschweig, and contributes its sustainable structures to the HErZ network. We combine meteorological, behavioural and social science approaches with a focus on organisations and the public. The variety of methods, such as impact modelling, qualitative interviews, quick response surveys, experiments and crowdsourcing allow to answer a wide range of related research questions and to involve users in co-design. The focus is on the public and public safety agencies - important clients of the DWD. Our work builds on results, expertise and data from the last three HErZ phases. For further training in the HErZ network, we offer advice on impact modelling, behavioural and social science methods, and access to courses in our Master's module "Interdisciplinary Natural Hazards Research". The proposed basic research will help drive the development of building blocks of the DWD's "New Warning System" and the communication of impacts and climate risks - and support the response to extreme weather events.
Genetic Variation as a Driver of ‘Brain Drain’: Can Selective Migration Based on Socioeconomic Potential Explain Growing Inequality?
European Union (EU) Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action
2024–2026
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Nadia Harerimana (Max Planck Research Group Biosocial – Biology, Social Disparities, and Development)
Nadia Harerimana is a doctorate candidate in the European Social Science Genetics Network (ESSGN), funded by the European Union. Her research explores how genetic differences interact with social and historical factors to shape where people live, how traits are distributed across populations, and how emerging genetic technologies are being applied. She is supervised by Dr. Laurel Raffington (Max Planck Research Group Biosocial – Biology, Social Disparities, and Development) and Dr. Abdel Abdellaoui (Amsterdam UMC, Complex Trait Genetics). The ESSGN consortium brings together an interdisciplinary group of academics with a shared interest in social science genetics, along with non-academic partners dedicated to using data science to address inequalities in life chances.
Empowering Citizens and Protecting Democracy in the Digital Age
Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz Prize from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) (German Research Foundation)
2018—2025
Ralph Hertwig (Center for Adaptive Rationality)
The online world is characterized by a multitude of challenges, including manipulative choice architectures, information overload, and the spread of harmful misinformation. Researchers at the Center for Adaptive Rationality have developed an evidence-based understanding of the dynamics and challenges of online environments and worked toward a roadmap for tackling these challenges. Our research has involved a range of methods, including online and field experiments, conceptual and modeling work, and evidence synthesis (e.g., systematic and expert reviews).
a) Online environments and democracy
Our research has shown that digital media has a significant impact on democracy, but its effects are context-dependent and multifaceted. While social media has been linked to increased political participation and knowledge in emerging democracies, it has also been associated with an increase in populism, polarization, and a decrease in trust in institutions and the political system in established democracies.
b) Boosting competences for the online world
In today’s information-saturated online world, attention has become a scarce and easily overwhelmed resource. Compounding this challenge is the prevalence of untrustworthy content, which leaves individuals vulnerable to misinformation, low-quality sources, and manipulative content. To address these issues, policy makers must focus on strengthening people's competences—empowering them to reclaim their autonomy and make informed decisions in the digital world. Researchers at the Center for Adaptive Rationality have contributed to a behavioral science approach known as Boosting, which aims to enhance individuals’ agency, self-control, and decision-making abilities. Boosting interventions draw on human cognition, environmental design, or both, to build on existing competences or develop new ones. One particularly vital competence in the digital age is critical ignoring—the ability to deliberately disregard irrelevant or misleading information and focus attention where it matters most. Through empirical research, we have tested simple yet effective cognitive interventions designed to cultivate other core competences. These include lateral reading, a strategy for evaluating the credibility of online sources; self-nudging, which involves adapting one’s digital environments to minimize distractions; and other evidence-based methods to improve information quality and minimize the influence of manipulative content.
c) Addressing misinformation and manipulation
The spread of false and misleading information online is a pressing global problem that requires urgent solutions. Both system-level and individual-level solutions are necessary to address this challenge. On the system level, we have explored public attitudes to content moderation dilemmas between freedom of expression and the prevention of harms from misinformation. On the individual level, we have developed a toolbox of cognitive and behavioral interventions to combat online misinformation and manipulation. We have also addressed the challenge of highly personalized advertising, including personality-based microtargeting, by developing self-reflection tools that prompt people to reflect on potential vulnerabilities they might have.
Narratives of COVID-19 in Germany: A Post-Pandemic Analysis of Public Perception and Trust
Siemens Caring Hands e.V.
2023—2025
Ralph Hertwig (Center for Adaptive Rationality)
This project This project aimed to investigate the narrative that prevails in Germany after the COVID-19 pandemic was officially declared over. Two competing narratives emerged: one emphasized the success of the pandemic control measures, while the other suggested that some measures, such as long school closures, were not as effective as claimed. Understanding which narrative would prevail—and how it would affect individual behavior and the public's perception of the pandemic—is crucial for informing future communication strategies and public health policies.
To investigate this, we conducted an online survey of a representative sample of 10,000 people in Germany, aged 18-75. The survey asked questions about their perception of the pandemic, their trust in state institutions and science, and their willingness to follow public health measures. The project aimed to provide insights into the factors that influenced the public's perception of the pandemic and to inform future communication strategies. The results of this project, along with the scientific papers currently being prepared, will contribute to a better understanding of the narrative that prevailed in the aftermath of the pandemic and its implications for public trust in state institutions and science.
Weighing Personal and Social Information in Cooperative Problem Solving
Deutsche Forschungsgmeinschaft (DFG) / Technische Universität (TU) Berlin
2020–2025
Ralph Hertwig, Ralf Kurvers, & Thorsten Pachur (Center for Adaptive Rationality)
A fundamental challenge in cooperative problem solving in human, animal and robotic groups is the integration of personal and social information. Relying too heavily on personal information prevents the spread of information among group members, whereas relying too heavily on social information may hamper profitable personal exploration and reduce collective performance. Here this key process is investigated by studying how collectives of different complexities dynamically balance personal and social information use across different levels of environmental complexity to achieve collective intelligence. The project will investigate both the performance of fixed strategies across different environments, as well as how agents learn about which strategies to use when facing unknown environments. The project proposes to investigate both human and robotic groups. To foster integration between both systems, similar experimental paradigms will be used: collective spatial search tasks. In human groups, the project plans to use immersive reality: humans will control avatars in the virtual world and collectively search for resources. This approach allows full experimental control, providing an ideal testbed for studying cooperative problem solving in humans. For robotic groups, the project plans to use swarms of Thymio II robots, performing collective spatial search tasks. Both ‘systems’ will be probed with collective search tasks of increasing complexity, starting with simple binary resources, and working towards more complex probabilistic resource environments (spatial multi-armed bandits). These tasks will share increasingly more overlap with cooperative shepherding. Human and robotic experimentation will continuously interact, using the following iterative steps:
- Extract fundamental principles of cooperative problem solving from human experimentation;
- Test the robustness of these strategies across a broader set of environments using agent-based-modeling;
- Use robotic simulations to test the performance of the most robust strategies in the ‘physical’ world;
- Implement these strategies in a robotic platform; and, finally
- Feed the insights and predictions from the modeling and robots back into human experimentation.
Reclaiming Individual Autonomy and Democratic Discourse Online:
How to Rebalance Human and Algorithmic Decision Making
VolkswagenStiftung
2021–2025
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Ralph Hertwig, Stefan Herzog, & Phillip Lorenz-Spreen (Center for Adaptive Rationality)
The research project "Reclaiming individual autonomy and democratic discourse online" between the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, the University of Bristol, and Northeastern University, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation's initiative "AI+Society of the future", seeks to find ways to rebalance human and algorithmic decision making. In doing so, the goal is to better understand the interaction and potential conflict between online information architecture and human cognitive capabilities, and to develop cognitively and technologically sound solutions to address problematic impacts of the current information architecture on the common good.
Assisting Behavioral Science and Evidence-Based Policy Making Using Online Machine Tools (POLTOOLS)
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
2022–2025
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Stefan Herzog (Center for Adaptive Rationality)
The research objective of this project it to develop, deploy and empirically evaluate online machine tools (e.g., intelligent search and collaboration interfaces) that improve the scientific process and the interface between behavioral science and evidence-based policy making to help meet the challenges arising from COVID-19 and other, future global crises. We rely on state-of-the-art tools from natural language processing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
This project is part of the proposal package MULTIPAN - Multidisciplinary research consortium on preventing and curbing pandemic outbreaks. This proposal represents an interdisciplinary and international project as the team members are trained and working in multiple disciplines (cognitive science, psychology, decision science, information science, computer science), and involves members from Germany, the UK, and the U.S.
Hybrid Human Artificial Collective Intelligence in Open-Ended Decision Making (HACID)
European Union (EU) Horizon Action Grant
2022–2025
Stefan Herzog & Ralf Kurvers (Center for Adaptive Rationality)
HACID is a collaborate project with colleagues from Irelan, Italy, and the UK. It develops a novel hybrid collective intelligence for decision support to professionals facing complex open-ended problems, promoting engagement, fairness and trust. A decision support system (HACID-DSS) is proposed that is based on structured domain knowledge, semi-automatically assembled in a domain knowledge graph (DKG) from available data sources, such as scientific and gray literature. Given a specific case within the addressed domain, a pool of experts is consulted to (i) extract supporting evidence and enrich it, generating a case knowledge graph (CKG) as a subset of the DKG, and (ii) provide one or more solutions to the problem. Exploiting the CKG, the HACID-DSS gathers the expert advice in a collective solution that aggregates the individual opinions and expands them with machine-generated suggestions. In this way, HACID harnesses the wisdom of the crowd in open-ended problems, relying on a traceable process based on supporting evidence for better explainability. A set of evaluation methods is proposed to deal with domains where ground truth is not available, demonstrating the suitability of the proposed approach in a wide range of application domains. Demonstrations are provided in two compelling case studies contributing to the UN Sustainable Development.
How the physical environment shapes the human brain (BrainScape)
European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant
2023-2028
Simone Kühn (Center for Environmental Neuroscience)
BrainScape's goal is to identify and quantify the environmental features that shape the human mind, and the underlying pathways and mechanisms. This topic is becoming increasingly urgent given the multitude of environmental problems we are facing, such as climate change, increased pollution and habitat destruction, as well as large-scale population shifts from rural to urban areas due to global urbanisation processes, which will drastically alter humans’ living environments. In order to adequately prepare for upcoming environmental changes and mitigate potential harm, we must be able to anticipate their impact.
To accomplish this, BrainScape has two main objectives:
1) to advance a more holistic understanding of the environment as a multidimensional, complex phenomenon, enabling us to identify the "active ingredients" of the physical environment that positively impact the brain and mental health; and
2) to gain insight into the pathways and mechanisms by which the physical environment affects the brain and mental health.
To account for the potential influence of time, we will focus on the long-, short- and acute-term effects of exposure. Based on this work, BrainScape aims to spearhead the emerging field of environmental neuroscience and make an impact by building a knowledge base for evidence-based urban planning to promote healthy living environments for society.
Icefishing: Individual, Collective and Environmental Drivers of Human Foraging Dynamics in the Wild
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
2021–2025
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Ralf Kurvers (Center for Adaptive Rationality)
In a world ruled by uncertainty, information acquisition is critical for adaptive decision-making. Comprehending adaptive decision-making requires a clear understanding of the type of information individuals gather (‘what’), the underlying mechanisms (‘how’) and the potential adaptive value of the information (‘why’). However, in human ecological research these fundamental questions have remained largely unintegrated and, hence, unanswered. To take the next step in understanding human decision-making from an adaptive perspective, the project therefore propose a novel integrative approach on information acquisition and processing in human behavioural ecology, focusing on a natural context of great importance: foraging behaviour in the wild. The overarching goal is to better comprehend how synergetic effects between individuals and environments shape human decision-making. The guiding questions are:
- How does individual and collective foraging success develop over the lifespan of individuals?
- What are the individual and collective information acquisition mechanisms underlying this development?
- How does the socio-ecological environment interact with the above-mentioned processes?
Two complementary approaches are used for the project:
- Analyses of longitudinal field data spanning almost 50 years, to quantify the development of individual and collective foraging success;
- Fieldwork, to understand the mechanistic underpinnings of human competitive and cooperative foraging decisions in the wild. Therefore foragers will be equipped with (1) tracking devices to study spatial behavior, (2) head cameras to quantify visual information acquisition, and (3) heart rate monitors to quantify physiological foraging costs.
Combined, these approaches will render unique and novel insights into important long-standing questions in human adaptive decision-making.
African Studies in Germany Through the Lens of Critical Race Theory
VolkswagenStiftung
2022–2025
Stephanie Lämmert (Center for the History of Emotions)
The intellectual and political rupture between Diaspora Studies/Black Studies and white-dominated African Studies has only just recently begun to be bridged. This project delves into the way in which whiteness as a structure informs knowledge production in Germany. By proposing to anchor Critical Race Theory (hereafter CRT) into German African Studies, the project seeks to open up new frontiers of productively thinking about the African continent and Black Germany. Instead of perpetuating the narrative of Germany as a post-racial society, we call for a serious engagement with the colonial roots of African Studies in Germany and interrogate its lasting legacy through the lens of CRT. The approach is twofold. First, the project proposes to critically examine the canon literature of African Studies, recognizing the structural and institutional dimension of knowledge production and dissemination about Africa in German universities. The goal is to understand who defines this canon, what kinds of questions are asked, and whether the present canon points to any conspicuous omissions in the context of current decolonization debates. Second, the project aims to bring German Africanist scholarship into conversation with activists’ traditions, texts, knowledges, and practices. Activism around decolonizing knowledge production and society at large has played a powerful role in contesting anti-Black racism in German society since the 1980s, and yet has remained unheard in universities. The tools of CRT undergird and connect our two objectives. The project’s results will be disseminated in academic and activist circles as well as to the wider public through workshops, blogs, and lecture series.
SYNAPSE: Observing Synaptic Density Changes During Human Skill Acquisition
Innovation Fund of the Max Planck Society
2024–2026
Ulman Lindenberger (Center for Lifespan Psychology)
The remarkable ability to acquire skills, such as flying an airplane or playing a musical instrument, forms the basis of humankind's most impressive achievements. Based primarily on findings in rodents, researchers have long theorized that the acquisition of such skills requires the structural rewiring of synaptic connections. However, very little is known about how this process unfolds in humans. Using a novel radioligand for estimating synaptic density in the living human brain with positron emission tomography (PET), we will investigate change in synaptic density during skill acquisition in humans. Our work is motivated by the expansion, exploration, selection, and refinement (EESR) theory of human skill learning. Drawing upon concepts from animal models, developmental neurobiology, and reinforcement learning, EESR theory posits that brain plasticity starts with an expansion-exploration phase during which microcircuits are formed in response to behavioral affordances that compete for control over behavior, followed by experience-dependent selection of one or more microcircuits, gradual elimination of unselected circuits, and refinement of the selected microcircuits. By repeatedly imaging the human brain with PET and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) during weeks of motor learning and spatial navigation training, we will test predictions of EESR theory regarding plasticity-related changes in synaptic density, cortical grey-matter and white-matter structure, and functional activity.
Social Media for Democracy (SOME4DEM)
Understanding the causal mechanisms of digital citizenship
EU Horizon Europe
2023–2026
Phillip Lorenz-Spreen, Stefan Herzog, Ralph Hertwig, & Anastasia Kozyreva (Center for Adaptive Rationality)
The research project between the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences and other European partners, like Science Po in Paris or the University of Venice, proposes to take the diagnosis of a structural change through the large scale adoption of social media seriously and seek to develop solutions that help make it work for democracy rather than against it. Our approach is driven by the recognition that one cannot simply return to the pre-social media era by re-establishing strong gate-keeping institutions without endangering essential features of the liberal democracy itself. Instead, we create solutions that are informed by three strands of research: (1) connecting the study of social media to theory of democracy; (2) investigating the causal mechanisms underlying the impact of social media on the public sphere; and (3) proposing interventions that respect the autonomy of users and empower them as informed digital citizens.
Hippocampal Stream in Rule Learning (HIPSTER)
CIFAR
2022–2025
Zoe Ngo (Center for Lifespan Psychology)
The abilities to extract the regularities governed by rules and apply them to new situations are foundational to most learning phenomena. The emergence of rule knowledge sometimes comes from memories of separate examples (examples-to-rules), such that the detection of the regularities adhered by multiple instances gives rise to rule knowledge. To accommodate both rule learning and memory of specific examples, contemporary neurocomputational models of memory posit a labor division between the distinct anatomical pathways within the hippocampus, a heterogeneous brain circuitry equipped with multiple computational characteristics. Specifically, distinct anatomical pathways with the hippocampus differentially support rule learning via statistics extraction and preserving separable codes for specific experiences Although supporting evidence for this idea begins to emerge from computational modeling and adult neuroimaging data, we do not know how a developing hippocampus learns rules and remembers specific instances in tandem. This project asks whether hippocampal pathways differentially support rule learning and specific memory preservation in school-aged children.
Jacobs Foundation Research Fellowship
Jacobs Foundation
2022–2026
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Zoe Ngo (Center for Lifespan Psychology)
Memory enables us to access the specific events that make up our past, and at the same time, amass knowledge that guides predictions for possible futures. Zoe Ngo is interested in how children develop these basic and complementary memory skills from age 4 to age 8. Zoe targets three building blocks of an adaptive memory: (i) remembering complex events, (ii) preventing confusion between similar experiences, and (iii) generalizing based on past experiences. With the Jacobs Foundation Research Fellowship, Zoe investigates how each of the three components develops, how they interact, and how brain maturation supports children’s improvements in memory skills.
To tackle these goals, Zoe and colleagues use a selection of behavioral assessments to measure children’s competence in each memory component at different ages. They employ statistical methods to understand the relationship between these building blocks of an adaptive memory, and test whether its structure differs with age. In addition, they how each aspect of memory changes within the same child over the course of three years. And finally, they also track the changes in each child’s regional brain volumes and connectivity via neuroimaging. This approach enables the researchers to examine how specific aspects of brain maturation can explain certain increases in children’s memory abilities.
The Best of Both Worlds: Mapping Developmental Changes in Real-World Memory to Controlled Assessments and Neural Maturation
Emmy Noether Program of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) (German Research Foundation)
2025–2028
Zoe Ngo (Center for Lifespan Psychology)
Remembering the past structures our world knowledge and guides our forecasts of the future. However, we do not know how the development of foundational memory processes support children’s memories for personal life events. The Emmy Noether Independent Research Group RAVEN, led by Zoe Ngo, aims to map concurrent within-child changes between four domains: lab-based memory assessments, real-world memory abilities, neural correlates of memory, and broader cognitive development, from ages 4 to 10. This integrated dataset will augment our understanding of children’s age-related propensity to acquire and retain certain kinds of information over others. Most excitingly, it directly applies contemporary neurocomputational models to an age-old mystery of why early childhood memories are vulnerable to retrieval inaccessibility later in life.
Self-Narratives and Emotions: Confronting the Individual in the Collective
VolkswagenStiftung (Volkswagen Foundation)
2024–2025
Kerstin Pahl (Center for the History of Emotions)
This project utilizes self-narratives to interrogate past emotions. A key tension in the history of emotions is whether it is possible to talk about emotions at the level of individual experience (and indeed, whether historians should even attempt to do so), or whether the history of emotions is most productive when thinking about collective emotional landscapes, for instance the emotions of religious, political, or social identities and institutions, or emotion norms and feeling rules. This workshop and subsequent special issue brings together new research and debates on how historians can use self-narratives to think about both the lives of individuals as well as broader histories of cultural change. Further, it brings European historical studies in conversation with global history as well as post-colonial and post-human studies to critically question the historical- and cultural-groundedness of conceptions of individuality. We would argue that the individual experience and their subsequent rendering into narrative form provides a privileged lens to enquire into precisely those encounters where binaries of bottom-up vs. top-down, or superordinate vs. subaltern, or human vs. non-human become upended and require more nuanced approaches.
Making Early Memory Engrams (MEME)
Jacobs Foundation
2023–2025
Sarah Power (Center for Lifespan Psychology)
This project investigates how and why young children sometimes struggle to recall past experiences. Using a memory task developed specifically for children aged 4, we record brain activity to better understand how memories are stored and accessed at this age. Our aim is to develop a non-invasive way to measure whether a memory is present but temporarily inaccessible, or whether it was never fully formed. By combining behavioral data with neurophysiological recordings, we hope to identify individual differences in memory function and gain new insight into the early development of memory availability and accessibility.
Epigenetic Pathways of Socioeconomic Disparities in Physical and Cognitive Health Across the Lifespan
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NIH) / Subaward from the University of Texas at Austin
2024–2029
Laurel Raffington (Max Planck Research Group Biosocial – Biology, Social Disparities, and Development)
Laurel Raffington has been awarded a National Institute of Health (NIH) R01 research grant (USD 2.8 million) together with Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden (University of Texas at Austin). The research project "Epigenetic Pathways of Socioeconomic Disparities in Physical and Cognitive Health Across the Lifespan" proceeds from 2024 until 2029.
Children who grow up in low-income homes are at higher risk for poor health and early mortality. It is difficult to study the effects of childhood social conditions on adult health, however, because sometimes these impacts are not evident for decades. This project probes whether DNA methylation (a type of epigenetic modification of the genome) can help researchers see how health is being negatively affected by adverse social conditions in childhood, using a unique research design that analyzes epigenetic data from four experimental or observational cohorts that span early childhood to older adulthood.
Jacobs Foundation Research Fellowship
Jacobs Foundation
2025–2027
Laurel Raffington (Max Planck Research Group Biosocial – Biology, Social Disparities, and Development)
Laurel Raffington’s research aims to uncover how early life interventions impact children’s lifespan learning and development by using novel epigenetic biomarkers. Traditional methods often fail to capture these effects in real-time, despite evidence of significant long-term benefits. By analyzing DNA methylation patterns, her work has shown that children from under-resourced families exhibit epigenetic signs of lower cognitive performance and faster aging. Raffington plans to integrate these biomarkers into randomized controlled trials, focusing on parental, and child well-being treatments. Her goal is to develop real-time measures of intervention efficacy, ultimately improving educational policies and child well-being.
The I in Missinformation: Understanding the Role of Individual Behavior in Social Media Information Diffusion
European Union (EU) Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action
2024–2026
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Shweta Suran (Center for Adaptive Rationality)
The dissemination of misinformation, propaganda, and conspiracy theories via social media poses a significant threat to democratic values on a global scale. The malicious use of these platforms undermines public trust in both mainstream media and democratic institutions. Although various interdisciplinary approaches have been developed to monitor and mitigate the spread of misleading information, the challenge remains persistent—and is projected to intensify.
To date, research has largely overlooked the behavioral aspects of how individuals engage with misinformation, particularly in terms of consumption and sharing. This interdisciplinary project seeks to address that gap by drawing on emerging perspectives from cognitive science, social psychology, collective behavior, and computational social science. Our aim is to gain a deeper understanding of the sociological, cultural, and psychological factors that drive individuals' decision-making processes in online environments.
The project will investigate online behavior across three core dimensions. First, it will examine how individuals interact with online content under varying levels of time pressure, comparing behaviors when users are subject to time constraints versus when they have the opportunity for reflection. Second, it will explore how specific features of online conversations—referred to as conversational affordances—affect the quality of deliberation and the potential for belief change. Finally, the project will analyze the relationship between individuals’ social media preferences, their choice of mainstream media sources, and how these align with their socioeconomic background and political beliefs. Together, these dimensions aim to provide a comprehensive understanding of the factors that shape online behavior in the context of misinformation.
Addressing the Generalizability Crisis with Large Language Models
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) (German Research Foundation)
2025–2027
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Dirk Wulff (Center for Adaptive Rationality)
The field of psychology has been grappling with a crisis of generalizability, where empirical findings are specific to a task or fail to replicate across contexts. In turn, traditional solutions that emphasize increased methodological stringency do not, per se, address the challenge of taming a sprawling array of constructs and measurements whose relations are largely unknown. A reevaluation of the relation between constructs and measures is imperative, alongside a structured approach to anticipate the circumstances under which generalization across measures or contexts will or will not materialize. This proposal suggests a language-based approach to this problem that promises to help estimate the nomological network connecting psychological constructs and associated measures. Language, integral to both theoretical formulation and data collection methods in psychology (e.g., self-reports, experimental instructions), can now be leveraged with the help of advanced language models, presenting a unique opportunity for both conceptual and empirical clarification. Specifically, this proposal suggests using language embeddings from state-of-the-art language models for an extensive examination of the relations between constructs and associated self-report and behavioral measures. This strategy promises to clarify the conceptual overlap between theoretical constructs and their operationalizations, as well as to help forecast the convergent and divergent validity of extant and novel psychological measures. The anticipated outcome is a clarified nomological network of constructs and associated measures. Ultimately, this research seeks to address the issue of limited generalizability in psychology, enhancing our understanding of the conditions under which empirical phenomena can be expected to replicate across measures and contexts.
EpiSoDi - Epigenetic Pathways of Socioeconomic Disparities Across the Lifespan
European Union (EU) Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action
2024–2026
Yayouk Willems (Max Planck Research Group Biosocial – Biology, Social Disparities, and Development)
Yayouk Willems has been awarded the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship by the European Commission. This award allows her to continue her collaboration with Laurel Raffington, group leader of the Max Planck Research Group Biosocial - Biology, Social Disparities, and Development. They will analyze data from the “Baby’s First Years Study“, a randomized controlled trial where mothers receive monthly cash gifts during their child’s first six years of life. Their research will focus on the effects of these cash gifts in early childhood on children’s and mother’s epigenome.
With the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellowship, the European Commission supports researchers from all disciplines with funding of up to 200 000 euros over two years. The funding supports postdoctoral researchers in their careers and international research.
Developing a Fundamental Approach to Understanding AI-Driven Social and Cultural Transformation
Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST)
2024–2028
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Hiromu Yakura (Center for Humans and Machines)
This collaborative research aims to establish a foundational approach to develop a deeper understanding of the multifaceted and trans-generational impacts of Al technologies. By combining data mining, behavioral experiments, and simulations, this research specifically focus on societal, collective impact beyond the scope of individual models. This includes not only how AI technologies wil change human behavior and social norms but also how such changes will influence the development of AI models.
Rule inference and Generalization in School-Aged Children
Jacobs Foundation
2023–2025
Ondrej Zika (Center for Lifespan Psychology)
This project aims to understand how children learn rules, fill knowledge gaps and how they integrate different sources of information to make accurate predictions. To this end, we are currently conducting a study in children aged 8 to 14. In the task, children complete a gamified task in which they learn how different stimuli map onto target locations, and later use this knowledge to infer locations for unseen stimuli. In addition to core performance measures, individual ability as well as mental health measures related to anxiety and depression are assessed.
The Role of Neural "Belief State" Representations in Decisions Under Uncertainty
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
2022–2025
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Ondrej Zika (Center for Lifespan Psychology)
This project investigates how different sources of uncertainty are integrated to form a belief state representation and, in turn, how such representations drive decisions. To answer these questions, behavioural, physiological (eye-tracking) and neural (fMRI) measures together with reinforcement learning models will be used while perceptual, outcome and contextual uncertainty will be experimentally manipulated. Building on previous work, the project particularly focuses on investigating the probabilistic nature of belief state representations in the orbitofrontal cortex.