Experienced Agency:
Emergence and Impact

Our experience of agency is represented by our experiences of control and causality over environmental changes. It is an integral part of human behaviour with a multitude of downstream consequences including perceived responsibility, but also affective consequences such as regret or pride. In this project, we study how and in which situations agency experience comes about, which factors (social, cognitive, affective) influence it, and how it impacts our subsequent behavioural decisions. We look into the motivational, affective, and social consequences of agency experience and how they interact with behavioural choices in basic research paradigms and more applied settings.

Research Grant: Retrospective and prospective agency in single- and multi-agent scenarios, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Geman Research Foundation; project number 406027551).

Research Grant: Agency from a biopsychosocial perspective, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Geman Research Foundation; SCHW 1955/1-1).

Motivating Pollinator Stewardship

Pollinator decline represents a huge challenge on multiple levels, from ecosystems over food production to human wellbeing. However, human beings are no mere observers in this; we are actively involved in and responsible for this decline in pollinating animals. Likewise, we can be actively involved in stopping the decline and in helping restore pollinator populations. This project is part of a huge interdisciplinary effort to understand the effects of pollinator decline on all relevant levels and to find strategies towards pollinator restoration. Particularly, our part will be to ask which effects pollinator decline has on mental wellbeing, and how we can motivate pollinator stewardship in everyday citizens.

Research Grant: Partner in EU-HORIZON project BUTTERFLY: Mainstreaming pollinator stewardship in view of cascading ecological, societal and economic impacts of pollinator decline. (Grant agreement ID: 101181930)

Socio-cognitive Perspectives on Sustainability Behaviour

Transforming our society towards sustainability represents a key challenge of the 21st century. Sustainability factors into almost all aspects of daily behavioural choices, thus requiring broad and wide-reaching behavioural change on micro-, meso- and macro-levels of society. Behavioural change, however, is intricately difficult; not unexpectedly, this leads to a widening gap between increasing levels of knowledge and the still missing translation into pro-environmental, behavioural choices. In this project, we investigate sociocognitive strategies for facilitating pro-environmental behaviour in a sustainable fashion including traditional social and cognitive strategies to newly developed narratification and immersion techniques to increase motivation through affective involvement and personal experiences.

Agency Experience, Mental Health, and Environmental Decline

We are facing many challenges today, from personal conflict over stressful situations at work or school to global challenges such as environmental decline and armed conflict. The world, and even our direct environment, seems sometimes out of (our) control. How do experiences of control and responsibility relate to mental health, to coping mechanisms, and to resilience? Which aspects can help us keep or regain our mental wellbeing without closing our eyes to reality?

A specific part of this project also looks into the impact of environmental decline on mental health in interaction with agency experience.

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