Organizational BehaviorForschung
Research Interests
My current research focuses on two broad areas: Decision making and self-regulation under stress and/or change and diversity and individual differences in labor market settings. Methodologically, I mainly use (lab and field) experiments, but recently also did some survey research and I do have one purely theoretical paper.
Other topics I have been working on are public good games, identity, framing, trust, and some contributions to experimental methods.
Below you find descriptions of each of my main research topics and some downloadable working papers. On the right side are links to my co-authors.
Individual differences and diversity
It all started with my PhD research on discrimination in the labor market. Through this I got interested in gender differences, which I studied in different projects, focusing on tournament entry and behavior in economic games. Realizing that gender differences often are only proxies for personality differences, I started to study personality differences and how they affect behavior in economic games. Then, additional diversity categories became part of my research as well. In several second- and third – source funding, we studied age difference in economic decision making. More recently, I turned back to the study of gender differences, in several experimental settings, with a focus on the underlying mechanisms both of differences and of discrimination, that will allow to extend the research to a broader focus on diversity.
Stress & related topics
Stress and decision making:
In a DFG-financed project with, among others, Christian Fiebach and Brigitte Kudielka we studied how stress influences economic decision making and how economically relevant situations can evoke stress. We continue to do that in several other externally and internally funded projects, focusing on firm contexts and on self-regulation in stressful situations. More recently, we included the ongoing pandemic as a stressor in that research.
Mental Health:
Together with colleagues from psychiatry, we focus on how mental health issues, mostly related to stress (clinical and sub-clinical depression) influence a person´s ability to self-regulate in stressful work conditions (team work, goal setting). We also study patients with borderline disorder and those scoring high on narcissism and psychopathy.
Cooperation:
In a DFG sponsored project together with Martin Kocher we study cooperativeness and stress in a large international firm – before the pandemic and also during recent home-office.
• Behavioral and Experimental Economics; Neuroeconomics
• Economic decision making under stress (DFG-Project)
• Gender, diversity and discrimination in economic decisions and group interactions
• Self-Regulation
• Mental Health
• Cooperation & Stress in Firms (DFG Project)
