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Research Centers

The Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (Director: Gerd Gigerenzer) investigates human rationality, in particular decision-making and risk perception in an uncertain world. Current research focuses on (1) bounded rationality, that is, the simple heuristics, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral that lay people and experts use to make decisions under constraints of limited time and knowledge, (2) social intelligence in cooperation and competition and (3) risk understanding and uncertainty management in everyday life, including applications in medicine, law, and education. Each of these research areas emphasizes the evolutionary foundations of behavior and cognition, in particular their domain specificity and functional adaptiveness.

Do emotions have a history? And do they make history? These are the questions that the Research Center The History of Emotions (Director: Ute Frevert) seeks to answer. To explore the emotional orders of the past, historians work closely with psychologists and education specialists. In addition, they draw on the expertise of anthropologists, sociologists, musicologists and scholars working on literature and art. Our research rests on the assumption that emotions – feelings and their expressions – are shaped by culture and learnt/acquired in social contexts. Research concentrates on the modern period (18th to 20th centuries). Geographically, it includes both western and eastern societies (Europe, North America and South Asia).

The Center for Lifespan Psychology (Director: Ulman Lindenberger) is characterized by a lifespan perspective and a concern with the optimization of human potential. The studies of children, adolescents, adults, and the elderly concentrate primarily on the development of cognition, memory, sensorimotor functions, intelligence, motivation, personality, and self-hood, as well as on prominent contextual factors of life-long socialization, such as interpersonal action coordination and co-development. In each of these areas, plasticity of human behavior and successful development, including their societal and neural causes and effects, play an important role in the conceptual and methodological design of the studies. Theory, methodology and history of developmental psychology define an additional area of interest.

Max Planck Research Groups

The Max Planck Research Group Affect Across the Lifespan (Head: Michaela Riediger) investigates age-related differences in affective experiences and in the abilities to regulate one’s own affect and to understand affect in other people. Unique features of the research approach are the combination of a novel mobile-phone based experience-sampling technology with psychophysiological monitoring and well-controlled experimental paradigms, and the consideration of the fact that affective development takes place in, and is influenced by, the individual’s social context.

The Max Planck Research Group Felt Communities? Emotions in European Music Performances (Head: Oliver Müller) investigates the historical development of the emotions triggered by music in the 19th and 20th centuries. Focusing on emotions as a public form of communication, the Research Group aims to decipher the emotional structure of communities and the role music plays in the development and cohesion of communities.

The Max Planck Research Group REaD (Reading Education and Development, Head: Sascha Schroeder) investigates the acquisition of reading skills in elementary school and their interaction with children’s general cognitive development. The group’s research combines longitudinal and experimental approaches to assess children’s reading skills from various perspectives and to model their interrelationships. The goal of this research is to identify the determinants of successful reading development and to evaluate which processes should be targeted by reading interventions.

IMPRS LIFE

The International Max Planck Research School The Life Course: Evolutionary and Ontogenetic Dynamics (LIFE) is part of the Max Planck Society's framework of International Max Planck Research Schools. The goal of the Research School is advanced research training in the study of human behavior and institutional systems over evolutionary and ontogenetic (life cycle) time. LIFE takes an integrative and interdisciplinary approach to understanding human development in a changing world, connecting evolutionary, ontogenetic, historical, and institutional perspectives.

IMPRS Uncertainty

The goal of The International Max Planck Research School Adapting Behavior in a Fundamentally Uncertain World (Uncertainty School) is to study cognitive, social, and organizational adaptations in uncertain and changing situations that involve individuals, groups, and institutions. The program combines a strong theoretical focus with practical applications.

IMPRS Moral Economies

The IMPRS Moral Economies explores the “Moral Economies of Modern Societies” by identifying values, emotions and habits that inform and inspire social formations which have emerged since the eighteenth century, in Europe, North America, and South Asia. Research and the curriculum focus on the interlocking of new modes of feeling and the definition and justification of new social values.

Harding Center

How do I make decisions in our modern, technological world? Questions like these are the research focus of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy (Director: Gerd Gigerenzer). The researchers will conduct studies and experiments and carry out surveys in the general population. Their findings and training seminars shall aid in assessing risks competently and correctly.