Career

Sep 2022 - present	Professor of Social Psychology (W2), Technical University Dresden,  Germany.
Aug 2015 - present	Research Fellow, Mind and Society Center, University of Southern  California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Sept 2016- Aug 2022	Junior Professor Social and Economic Cognition III, Department of Psychology and Center for Social and Economic  Behavior (http://c-seb.de/), University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
May 2019 - Aug 2022	Executive Board Member Center for Social and Economic Behavior,  University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
May 2019	Visiting Scholar, Singapore Management University, Department of  Psychology, Singapore, Singapore.
March 2018	Visiting Scholar, University of California San Diego, Department of  Psychology, La Jolla, CA, USA.,
February 2018	Visiting Scholar, Singapore Management University, Department of  Psychology, Singapore, Singapore.
Oct 2012 – Aug 2016	Postdoctoral Research Fellow, VU University Amsterdam,  Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Aug 2014 - Sep 2015	NWO Rubicon Research Fellow at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, working with Norbert Schwarz (on leave from VU University Amsterdam) Los Angeles, CA, USA
Oct 2011 – Dec 2011	Visiting Scholar at the University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany.
Apr 2008 – Oct 2008	Research Assistant Department of Communication Science, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Sep 2006 – Jul 2007	Research Assistant Social Psychology, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Research interests

The world is a complicated place and issues are often multifaceted and complex. People often face opposing motives, desires, and goals. For instance, people can experience conflict between doing what is healthy vs. what is fun, between doing what’s good for themselves vs. what is good for others, or between liking and disliking another person, policy, or issue. I study the consequences of this inner conflict on cognition and behavior. How do people regulate this conflict? How can people use these experiences to make better decisions and less biased judgments? How do people feel about other people who express feelings of conflict? And what is the role of conflict in promoting sustainability, such as reduction of meat consumption and food waste? In my lab, we empirically examine these questions: 

• Ambivalence
• Choice and choosing
• Evaluative conflict
• Decision-making
• Judgment
• Social cognition