Ralph Hertwig

Director of the Research Center for Adaptive Rationality and
Managing Director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development

Office of the Director of the Center for Adaptive Rationality
Maren Kutscha, Katja Münz, Petra Siemers-Hering
sekhertwig@mpib-berlin.mpg.de
Phone: +49 30 82406-202

Office of the Managing Director
Katrin Götz
sekgd@mpib-berlin.mpg.de
Phone: +49 30 82406-210

Memberships and Service (Selection)

Member, German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Section "Psychology and Cognitive Sciences"
Member, German National Academy of Science and Engineering acatech
Member, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Fellow, Association for Psychological Science (APS)
Member, Wilhelm-Wundt-Gesellschaft
Faculty, International Max Planck Research School on the Life Course (LIFE)
Fellow, Max Planck School of Cognition
Faculty, International Max Planck Research School for Computational Methods in Psychiatry and Ageing Research (COMP2PSYCH)

Research interests

Models of bounded and ecological rationality
Decisions from experience
The psychology of risk
Lifespan development of decision making
Evidence-based public policy (Boosting)

Short CV

2017	Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize
since 2016	Honorary professor, Freie Universität Berlin
since 2013	Honorary Professor, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
since 2012	Director, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin
2005–2012	Full Professor for Cognitive and Decision Sciences at the Department of Psychology, University of Basel
2003	Habilitation in Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin
1995	Ph. D. (Dr. rer soc.) in Psychology, Universität Konstanz

Selection of recent publications

(the complete list of publications can be found here)

Huang, Y., Luan, S., Wu, B., Li, Y., Wu, J., Chen, W., & Hertwig, R. (2024). Impulsivity is a stable, measurable, and predictive psychological trait. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 121(24), Article e2321758121.
Kozyreva, A., Lorenz-Spreen, P., Herzog, S. M., Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., Hertwig, R., Basol, M., Berinsky, A. J., Betsch, C., Cook, J., Fazio, L. K., Geers, M., Guess, A. M., Maertens, R., Panizza, F., Pennycook, G., Rand, D. J., Rathje, S., Reifler, J., Roozenbeek, J., Schmid, P., Smith, M., Swire-Thompson, B., Szewach, P., van der Linden, S., & Wineburg, S. (2024). Toolbox of individual-level interventions against online misinformation. Nature Human Behaviour. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01881-0
Lejarraga, T., Schnitzlein, D. D., Dahmann, S. C., & Hertwig, R. (2024). Birth-order effects on risk taking are limited to the family environment. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1531(1), 60–68. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.15085
Li, Y., Breithaupt, F., Hills, T., Lin, Z., Chen, Y., Siew, C. S. W., & Hertwig, R. (2024). How cognitive selection affects language change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 121(1), Article e2220898120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2220898120
Ruggeri, K., Vanderslott, S., Yamada, Y., Argyris, Y. A., Većkalov, B., Boggio, P. S., Fallah, M. P., Stock, F., & Hertwig, R. (2024). Behavioural interventions to reduce vaccine hesitancy driven by misinformation on social media. BMJ, 384, Article e076542. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2023-076542
Ciranka, S., & Hertwig, R. (2023). Environmental statistics and experience shape risk-taking across adolescence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 27(12), 1123–1134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2023.08.020
Haux, L. M., Engelmann, J. M., Arslan, R. C., Hertwig, R., & Herrmann, E. (2023). Chimpanzee and human risk preferences show key similarities. Psychological Science, 34(3), 358–369.
Kozyreva, A., Herzog, S. M., Lewandowsky, S., Hertwig, R., Lorenz-Spreen, P., Leiser, M., & Reifler, J. (2023). Resolving content moderation dilemmas between free speech and harmful misinformation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 120(7), Article e2210666120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2210666120
Kozyreva, A., Wineburg, S., Lewandowsky, S., & Hertwig, R. (2023). Critical ignoring as a core competence for digital citizens. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 32(1), 81–88. https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214221121570
Lorenz-Spreen, P., Oswald, L., Lewandowsky, S., & Hertwig, R. (2023). A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy. Nature Human Behaviour, 7, 74-101. Freier Zugang
Spiliopoulos, L., & Hertwig, R. (2023). Variance, skewness and multiple outcomes in described and experienced prospects: Can one descriptive model capture it all? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 152(4), 1188–1222. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001323