What I Study
Political Psychology is the common thread running through my research projects, that is: I investigate political phenomena by using the psychologists‘ toolbox. I examine individuals‘ perceptions and evaluations of the political environment in which they are embedded and how these orientations shape motivation for political engagement. In my dissertation, I synthesize psychological theories from motivation studies to investigate why some people want to engage with politics and others do not. In another line of research, I investigate citizen orientations towards the political system in the form of populist attitudes or democratic support. Finally, I study political parties and orientations of party members towards these organizations.
How I study it
I put emphasis on conceptual clarity and proper theorizing of individual-level processes. I am Open Science advocate (see MZES Open Social Science Conference 2019: Practicing New Standards in Transparency and Reproducibility). Hence, I strive for transparent and reproducible research practices (see Syntaxes and Data).
What I Do
I work for MZES (Mannheim Centre for European Social Research) and Gesis (Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences) in Mannheim. I am associated with the Chair for Political Psychology (Harald Schoen), one of the Principal Investigators for the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES). In the run-up to the 2017 federal elections, I was responsible for programming and implementing the GLES online panel surveys. As of now, as Local GLES Coordinator, we in the process of handing over the German Election Study to GESIS, where it will have its new permanent institutional home.
