Our Colleague Alex Rieger is visiting the Group for Neural Theory at École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Here, he is visiting Boris Gutkin's group to work on and extend his knowledge about homeostatic reinforcement learning. We hope he has a great time and lots of new experiences!
At the Fachgruppentagung Methoden und Evaluation of the DGPs, Alex Rieger and Jan de Haan presented their work with Anna Pöker (a former bachelor student) and Prof. Dr. Frank Eggert on modelling human vigilance behaviour using stochastic processes. The study applies concepts from behavioural ecology to urban university contexts and shows that vigilance rates differ systematically across environments such as cafeterias, libraries and study halls. The results support the use of ecological models to understand human behaviour in modern settings.
Our colleague Alex Rieger was in Zürich as a participant of the Computational Psychiatry Course organized by the Translational Neuromodeling Unit (TNU) of University of Zurich & ETH Zurich. There were many interesting talks on Bayesian modelling, reinforcement learning and active inference, as well as applications, by renowned experts.
24. - 28.08.2025. Our colleague Jan de Haan recently visited the ECVP (47th European Conference on Visual Perception) at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. The event was an inspiring gathering of researchers from around the world, offering new insights into the field of visual perception. Jan attended a number of talks and symposia, fostering new connections and gaining fresh perspectives. The conference was a great success and provided valuable inspiration for our ongoing work.
Our colleague Alex Rieger, together with Dr. Florian Lange from KU Leuven, has published a paper in Behavior Research Methods The paper, titled “A minute can only be spent once: Validating a behavioral paradigm to study societally relevant time allocation conflicts”, introduces the Behavioral Allocation Task (BAT), paradigm designed to capture how pro-environmental behaviors compete with alternative options such as financial gain or hedonic activities. The study demonstrates that BAT reliably tracks how people allocate their time, highlighting both the role of opportunity costs and individual differences in pro-environmental propensity. This makes BAT a promising tool for understanding and promoting societally beneficial behavior in the face of competing demands. Read more here.
For the second time, students presented their biopsychology seminar work at the end of the semester. They were tasked with modelling everyday human behaviour using either game theory or behavioural ecology.
It was fascinating to see the variety of human behaviour that could be modelled, from supermarket queues to study space allocation. We were impressed by many thoughtful approaches and engaging discussions.
The IPMB is represented by two contributions in the newly published volume Evolutionary Social Sciences - A Tour.
Prof. Dr. Frank Eggert and Dr. Nicole Holzhauser (Institute of Sociology) authored the chapter Evolutionary Psychology: A Detour to an Evolutionary Paradigm for Psychology?, in which they present Behavioural Selection Theory as a broader evolutionary framework for psychology, one that goes beyond the limits of classic evolutionary psychology by incorporating mechanisms for rapid and anticipatory adaptation.
Our colleagues Alex Rieger, Annemarie Hartung and Jan de Haan contributed the chapter Mate Value Lies in the Fitness Function of the Beholder. Here, they discuss a formalised approach to the concept of mate value, grounding it in theoretical biology and modelling it dynamically rather than as a fixed personality trait.
The volume is now available in English, following its earlier publication in German.
Curious to take a look? You can find the book here.
At the SMiP (Statistical Modeling in Psychology) Summer School, held at the University of Mannheim, our colleague Annemarie Hartung participated in a workshop on Dynamic Longitudinal Modeling, which provided in-depth insights into contemporary statistical approaches for modeling change over time. Additionally she presented her poster titled “Zooming in on Emotions: A Shiny App for Single-Case Research.”
We were pleased to welcome Prof. Dr. Dirk Langemann (Institute for Partial Differential Equations, TU Braunschweig) as a guest speaker at the Biopsychology Study Group.
In his talk, Prof. Langemann explored mathematical modeling as a method, illustrating its potential and application through examples from biological contexts. His insights offered valuable new perspectives at the intersection of mathematics and biology.
We thank all participants for joining us in this engaging interdisciplinary event.
At the International Conference on Environmental Psychology in Vilnius, Lithuania, Florian Lange (KU Leuven) presented joint work with our colleague Alex Rieger. Under the title "Studying Pro-Environmental Behaviour as a time allocation conflict" the work extends previous research methodology to explicitly analyze tradeoffs and opportunity costs between pro-environmental and alternatively rewarding behaviour. A corresponding manuscript is currently under review.
Once again this summer semester, our lecture series on quality assurance and quality management returned – with a spotlight on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine.
Under the lead of Hon.-Prof. Dr. med. René Brouwer, FETCS, participants explored key concepts and practical applications across four focused sessions:
Overview and introduction big data and clinical data analysis
Logistic regression and clinical examples
Tree-based classification methods and clinical applications
AI in medicine
A heartfelt thank you goes to Hon.-Prof. Dr. med. René Brouwer, FETCS, for leading the series, and to all participants for their valuable contributions and thought-provoking discussions.
Alex Rieger attended the 7th Joint Statistical Meeting of the Deutsche Arbeitsgemeinschaft Statistik at HU Berlin. There he attended talks and tutorials on topics such as Bayesian statistics and survival analysis, and statistical modelling in the behavioural sciences and ecology. He also presented a poster on survival probabilities as a centrepiece of behavioural bheories, which resulted from joint work with Matthias Borgstede, Oliver Hulme and Frank Eggert.
Our former colleague Tabea Schlender, together with Alex Rieger and Prof. Frank Eggert, has published an insightful paper in Human Nature that explores the application of the Marginal Value Theorem (MVT) to supermarket shopping behaviour. Their study examines whether supermarkets can be considered resource patches within the framework of optimal foraging theory, and how time spent in the store affects financial gains. This research provides valuable insights into the interdisciplinary application of ecological models to everyday consumer behaviour. Continue reading here.
Annemarie Hartung and Karoline Misch, together with Dr. Nicole Holzhauser from the Institute of Sociology, have published an essay highlighting Florence Nightingale's achievements as a social statistician. While Nightingale is best known as the founder of modern nursing, this essay highlights her lesser-known contributions to statistics and social science. The article is part of The Invisible Half series, which focuses on women whose contributions to the history of sociology have been overlooked, and aims to shed light on their legacy. Click here to read the article!
Alex Rieger participated in a Young Scientists Retreat of the DGPA and the Fachgruppe Biologische Psychologie und Neuropsychologie of the DGPS in Berlin. He presented a talk on Active Inference in the context of homeostasis based on his recent research stay at the Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance. Aside from opportunities to get in touch with other early career researchers, there was also a talk and workshop by Daniel Leising on power abuse in academia and a visit in the Mind-Body-Emotion lab of Dr. Gaebler at the Max Planck Dahlem Campus.
Two of our colleagues, Dr. Farina Wille and Karoline Misch, took part in the kick-off event for the new research programme ‘Transformation des Energiesystems Niedersachsen TEN.efzn’ in Hanover. A new joint project that will be funded with 58.2 million euros over the next five years by the zukunft.niedersachsen funding programme.
As part of the research platform ‘Vertrauenswürdige Digitalisierung sicherheitskritischer Energiesysteme’, Karoline Misch and Farina Wille will focus on the analysis of trust in socio-technical (agent) systems and the design of human-machine interfaces (HMIs).
Our colleague Jan de Haan, together with Prof. Carsta Simon from the University at Agder (Norway) has published a paper in Perspectives on Behavior Science. The paper critically examines the concept of response strength in behavioral psychology, highlighting its theoretical shortcomings such as circular reasoning and essentialist assumptions. As an alternative, it presents the Multilevel Model of Behavioral Selection - a framework grounded in selectionist principles - which avoids these pitfalls. Curious? You can find the entire article here.