Research

Our research focuses on the area of decision making, judgements, and attitudes. In decision making, we research experience and learning, routines and inertia effects, intuition and automaticity, affect and emotion, information search and strategy selection, as well as individual differences in strategy selection. We make our research findings accessible by developing and evaluating techniques and systems to support and optimize decision making. In the area of judgements, we research how people develop subjective judgements of frequencies, probabilities, risk, and time. Our research findings in this area provide insights into the workings of memory. In the area of attitudes, we are interested in the processes behind the development of preferences and evaluations. We are especially interested in the manner in which information is integrated implicitly and explicitly.

Explaining heterogeneity in direct replications.

Within the DFG-funded priority program META-REP (SPP 2317), we are working in cooperation with the Ludwig-Maximilian-University of Munich to investigate to what extent statistical artifacts, such as varying standard deviations or measurement (in)precision, can explain heterogeneity in psychological effects.

KEEP-Panel Thuringia: Cognitive development of decision making competence and societal participation

Thanks to financial support from the state of Thuringia, the KEEP-Panel Thuringia will be established starting in September 2021. The goal of the panel is to examine the development of decision making competencies and facilitating factors in childhood and adolescence. Existing individual research projects in this area at the University of Erfurt will be consolidated into a collective effort.

Probabilistic decisions in children

This research project, established in 2013, is funded by the German Research Society (DFG) and addresses the question of how children make decisions in risky situations as well as how decision making competencies develops from preschool to middle school age. With the start of the second stage of this project, we also examine how decision making situations must be constructed in order to support children in making good decisions.

Development of decision making strategies across the lifespan

This project, which began as a Ph.D. project, examines how decision making processes develop across the lifespan – from early childhood through late adulthood. A central aim of this research project is the construction of research paradigms that are appropriate for such a large age range.

Research tool Mousekids

Mousekids is a computer program for examining decision making behavior in children and adults. We provide researchers with a copy of the program and an instruction manual free of charge for non-commercial research purposes.

Kinder-Uni workshops: Research and experimenting for preschool and primary school children

Under the motto „research for and with children”, we regularly organize workshops for children in different age groups that make the topics of experimental research, empirical science, and psychological topics accessible to children.

Enlightenment Reloaded (Aufklärung Reloaded, AuRel)

Changing irrational beliefs and encouraging scientific thinking