© uni-muenster NEWS
Postdoctoral Research Associate commencing on 1 June 2024
We are offering a fixed-term full-time position (100%) for 3 years
October 2023
Expert analysis by Gerald Echterhoff for the news portal RND on
responses to terror threat and multiple crises. Online in German linkMarch 2023
In the recent podcast episode (link) on The Breaker (UK), Gerald Echterhoff talks about psychological factors of helping refugees. The
focus is on UK residents offering shelter to refugees from the Ukraine. The episode was also aired on Hope FM radio.November 2022
Expert analysis by Gerald Echterhoff in the Swiss daily newspaper NZZ (Neue Züricher Zeitung) on responses to loss and the psychology of conscious sacrifice. Online in German NZZOctober 2022
Judith Knausenberger gives a presentation for the Akademie Franz Hitze Haus and Deutscher Caritasverband on attitudes toward different refugee groups and unequal treatment of Ukrainian and Syrian refugees.September 2022
Expert analysis by Gerald Echterhoff on loneliness risks due to high inflation in the newspaper NRZ (Neue Rhein Zeitung).May 2022
Call For Papers (CRESP): Special Issue in CRESP - The Social Psychology of Forced Migration, Guest Editors: Gerald Echterhoff, JuliaBecker & Eva GreenApril 2022
Radio interview with Gerald Echterhoff on explanations of help and support for people fleeing
Ukraine, Antenne Niedersachsen.February 2022
Expert analysis by Gerald Echterhoff in the news magazine „Christian Science Monitor“ on Germans' confidence in science and the testing
culture in the pandemic
Christian Science MonitorFebruary 2022
Interview about identity conflicts and perceived threat by refugees and Muslims with Gerald Echterhoff & Mitja Back in German magazine "Psychologie Heute".December 2021
Full-page Interview with Gerald Echterhoff in the daily nation-wide newspaper „Der Tagesspiegel” on communication and social contact in times of the pandemic.December 2021
Expert analysis by Gerald Echterhoff in the Swiss Radio and Television (SRF) on mandatory vaccinations. Online in GermanNovember 2021
In a radio podcast for Bavarian Public Radio (Bayern 2), Gerald Echterhoff analyses the public reaction to the fourth Covid-19 wave. Online in GermanNovember 2021
TV Interview with Gerald Echterhoff on WDR Public Broadcasting (Lokalzeit Münsterland) on individual responsibility in the prolonged Corona pandemic. Online in GermanNovember 2021
Shared Reality in the mediapsychologists identify shared reality as a key component of close relationships
June 2021
Expert analysis by Gerald Echterhoff on psychological responses to the lifting of pandemic control measures and the corresponding "new/ old freedom" in Tagesthemen News Magazine on German Public Television.May 2021
Radio interview with Gerald Echterhoff on vaccination envy, justice perception, and social comparison during the Corona pandemic, Antenne Münster.
Antenne MünsterApril 2021
Interview with Gerald Echterhoff on in a feature on affective and cognitive effects of warnings against the surge of new Corona infections reflective / systematic processing of scientific evidence, and barriers to collective agency.March 2021
TV Interview with Gerald Echterhoff on WDR Public Broadcasting (Lokalzeit Münsterland) on frustration and aggressive behaviors in the prolonged Corona pandemic. Online in German
WDR MediathekFebruary 2021
Expert analysis by Gerald Echterhoff in a feature on the limits of idividual freedom in an era of crises (pandemics, climate change) on National Public Radio (Deutschlandfunk Kultur). GE analyzes the relation between collective and individual processes, gambling on uncertainty, and radical protests.Deutschlandfunk Kultur
February 2021
Full-page Interview with Gerald Echterhoff in the daily nation-wide newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung on zu distress, social inequality, unrealistic optimism und unfulfilled hopes after one year of the Corona pandemic. Online (in German) atFebruary 2021
January 2021
Virtual Workshop GEM (Generative Episodic Memory) 2021, organized by the DFG-refunded Research Unit FOR 2812, February 16-18, 2021
Interview with Gerald Echterhoff on German Public Radio, Deutschlandfunk Kultur. GE analyzes the psychology of complying with COVID restrictions, behavioral control and justification for non-compliance.January 2021
Interview with Gerald Echterhoff on WDR 1Live (German Public Radio) on psychological factors of frustration in the tightened lockdown and COVID policy acceptance.December 2020
Interview and discussion with Gerald Echterhoff at the Microsoft Virtual
Executive Roundtable, "Work and private life in crisis mode: How the
pandemice affects society and organizations - a psychological perspective"December 2020
Expert analysis by Gerald Echterhoff on social distancing during the COVID pandemic and the role of social online media for coping with
loneliness, in wissen leben, WWU University Journal.December 2020
Interview with Gerald Echterhoff on coping with social distance and isolation during the COVID pandemic, for the online journal RUMSNovember 2020
Expert analysis on BR24 social video Expert analysis by Gerald Echterhoff for a social video produced by Bayerischer Rundfunk public broadcasting, Channel BR 24, Why have Corona infections been rising?October 2020 - Interview for Radio Bremen
Gerald Echterhoff analyzes people's responses to new social-contact restrictions, political communication and social inequalities due to
anti-infection measures, Radio Bremen 2 (Public Radio)October 2020 - Interview for Radio Bremen
Gerald Echterhoff analyses motivational processes, decision fatigue and uncertainty in the "Corona Fall" in an interview on Public Radio Bremen.October 2020
Interview with Gerald Echterhoff on WDR5 Public Radio concerning biases and political communication about the "Corona-Marathon" (Link in German)October 2020
Expert analysis inExpert analysis in DER STANDARD daily newspaper (Vienna); Link in German
Expert analysis by Gerald Echterhoff on responses to Corona risks, guilt and communication about infectionsSeptember 2020
Expert analysis in FOCUS online magazine
Interview and expert analysis by Gerald Echterhoff on stigma, emotions and coping with uncertainty in response to Corona infectionsAugust 2020
Interview in WN daily newspaper
Interview with Gerald Echterhoff on attention and prosocial behaviors in mundane situationsJuly 2020
Expert analysis in DIE ZEIT weekly magazine
Expert analysis by Gerald Echterhoff on preventive behaviors, group norms and shared reality in the new "Corona normality" in ZEIT onlineJuly 2020
Interview for Radio Bremen
Public radio station Radio Bremen: Gerald Echterhoff talks about violations of Corona rules in group settingsMay 2020
Interview for Deutschlandfunk Nova
Public radio (Deutschlandfunk Nova): Gerald Echterhoff talks about need threat, shared reality and we-ness in the Corona crisis; communication about the "Corona-Marathon", Interview in German LanguageMay 2020
Corona expert analysis in FOCUS News Magazine
Public radio (Deutschlandfunk Nova): Gerald Echterhoff talks about need threat, shared reality and we-ness in the Corona crisis; communication about the "Corona-Marathon", Interview in German Language FOCUS Weekly Magazine on reactions to the Corona crisis.April 2020
Corona expert analysis on Public TV
Expert analysis by Gerald Echterhoff in the public TV news magazine Tagesthemen on psychological demands from lockdown and contact restrictions during the Corona crisis.April 2020
Analysis on climate politics after Corona on Public TV
Psychological analysis by Gerald Echterhoff in the public TV magazine "Aktuelle Stunde" on the interplay between climate crisis and Corona crisis.April 2020
Analysis of psychological stressors from Corona lockdown on Public TV
Expert opinion by Gerald Echterhoff in the public TV magazine "Aktuelle Stunde" on psychological stressors (uncertainty, frustration) from lockdown and distancing during the Corona crisis.April 2020
Corona expert analysis in Focus news magazine
Social-psychological expert analysis by Gerald Echterhoff in the news magazine Focus Focus Online on threats to social cohesion from the Corona crisis.March 2020
Interview with HR Info Radio
Public radio (HR info): Gerald Echterhoff talks about the impact of the Corona crisis on people and society and about the psychology of political communicationMarch 2020
Interview with German Public Radio
In a 30 minute interview with German National Public Radio (Deutschlandfunk Kultur) (Deutschlandfunk Kultur) Gerald Echterhoff talks about psychological responses and social dilemmas in the Corona crisisMarch 2020
Interview with MDR Radio
Gerald Echterhoff talks about responses to unpredictability and self-management strategies during the Corona crisisMarch 2020
Newspaper article on threats by corona virus
In a half-page article in "Westfälische Nachrichten" Gerald Echterhoff explains responses to threats from the new corona virus.February 2020
Interview for Radio RST
In a radio interview for Radio RST Gerald Echterhoff talks about defense and prejudice towards people potentially infected with the new corona virus.December 2019
Interview for BR2 radio
In a radio interview for Bavarian Public Radio (Bayern 2) Gerald Echterhoff explains how people will be likely to remember the past decade (i.e., the 2010s)October 2019
Our research in the media: Newspaper report and press release on studies of support for refugee integration in East vs. West GermanySeptember 2019
Gerald Echterhoff has been appointed to the Board of Directors of the International Society for the Science of Existential Psychology (ISSEP).May 2019
Judith Knausenberger received a scholarship from the German Research Foundation (DFG) for a research stay with Dr Victoria Esses at Western University in London, Canada.
Sebastian Cancino Montecinos (Stockholm University), Simona Haásová (University of Vienna), and Bjarne Schmalbach receive funding from the EASP for a research project titled "Shared Reality as a Cognitive Process without Motivation" (volume: 2,370 €).December 2018
November 2018
Gerald Echterhoff has just been awarded funding for a research project titled "How Interpersonal Communication Affects Communicators’ Memory: An Analysis of Cognitive and Motivational Processes" (36 months, € 329.418 incl. programme flat charge ) in the new Research Group "Constructing Scenarios of the Past: A New Framework in Episodic Memory",(FOR2812, Speaker: Prof. Dr. Sen Cheng, Ruhr-University Bochum), funded by The German Research Foundation (DFG).
The application for new funding for the DFG-Excellencecluster "Religion and Politics: Dynamics of Tradition and Innovation" at WWU Münster has been successful! In the cluster, Mitja Back, Gerald Echterhoff, Olaf Müller, Detlef Pollack, Bernd Schlipphak will receive funding (705.000 €) for their project titled "Threat perceptions, feelings of belonging, acceptace of democratic sovereignty: A new European conflict line with religious implications?"October 2018
Bjarne Schmalbach receives a travel grant from the DAAD (volume 1,542€) and a travel grant from the SPSP (volume $500) to visit the SPSP annual convention 2019 in Portland.April 2018
The Academy of Sciences and Arts of the Federal State (NRW) has elected Gerald Echterhoff as fellow (full regular member) of the Class of Humanitites. The induction will take place at the Academy's annual celebration on May 16.March 2018
A Special Issue proposal on "The Social Psychology of Forced Migration and Refugee Integration" (guest-edited by Gerald Echterhoff, Jens Hellmann, Mitja Back, Victoria Esses, Ulrich Wagner) was selected in a competitive process for publication in the European Journal of Social Psychology (EJSP). We look forward to receiving exciting and high-quality submissions!ARCHIVE
September 2017
In interviews with WDR and NDR Info radio, Gerald Echterhoff gives expert advice on factors of observer intervention in emergencies, read the interview on wdr.de (in German)
Anna Giesen has been awarded the poster award at this year's meeting of the the Social Psychology division of the German Association of Psychology for her poster "Do I really feel your pain? Comparing the effects of observed and personal ostracism" (co-authored by Gerald Echterhoff).
August 2017
Gerald Echterhoff is interviewed for an article on flashbulb memories in the Swiss newspaper Zürcher Tagesanzeiger. See the article (in German)
March 2017
The German Research Foundation (DFG) has just awarded funding for a project titled "When Virtual Contact Is All You Need: The Effect of Facebook Reminders on Responses to Social Exclusion" to Gerald Echterhoff (funding period: 24 months, total volume approx. EUR 164.000)
December 2016
PD Dr. Ullrich Wagner has been awarded a research grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG) for a project entitled "Psychological Mechanisms of Socially Guided Memory Encoding and the Role of Oxytocin" (volume 210.000 EUR, including a full postdoctoral researcher position) for a duration of two years.
November 2016
Bjarne Schmalbach receives an award for his master's thesis on regulatory focus in health-specific contexts from the faculty for Applied Human Sciences at the University of Applied Sciences Magdeburg-Stendal.
October 2016
Melia Janbakhsh (Exeter University), Judith Knausenberger, Adrian Lüders (Salzburg University) and Sohad Murrar (University of Wisconsin-Madison) will receive funding from the EASP for a research project titled "Threat and Surveillance" (volume € 2.000)
September 2016
Gerald Echterhoff talks about the susceptibility of human memory to distortion and social influence in an interview with Doris Renck on HR2 radio.
July 2016
On the occasion of Theresa May's inauguration as British prime minister, Gerald Echterhoff is interviewed by the German Press Agency (Deutsche Presse-Agentur, dpa) about gender differences in professional communication and leadership.
June 2016
A symposium on "The role of oxytocin in social cognition and behavior: Current advances," co-organized by Michaela Pfundmair (LMU Munich), Gerald Echterhoff, and Shihui Han (Peking University), held in Munich on September 15-17, will receive funding (EUR 27.932) from the Sino-German Science Center, a joint venture of the DFG and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). We are looking forward to the event!
January 2016
Research by Gerald Echterhoff und Isabel Lindner (University of Kassel) on false self-attributions of others' actions is reported in the lead story "Das eingebildete Leben" (The imagined life) in the German news magazine DER SPIEGEL (issue 1/2016 See the article (in German).
December 2015
After being nominated by Gerald Echterhoff, our close collaborator Tory Higgins from Columbia University (New York) will receive the prestigious Anneliese Maier Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (host: Gerald Echterhoff). The award funds are made available over a period of five years (2016-2021) to support research collaboration with colleagues in Germany. We are delighted about this opportunity for intensiying the collaboration!October 2015
Lara Ditrich (IWM Tübingen), Anna Giesen, and Janne Kaltiainen (Helsinki University) will receive funding from the EASP for a research project titled "Be innovative, but don't take it too far: testing boundary conditions of the leeway effect" (volume € 2000)August 2015
Gerald Echterhoff, René Kopietz, Leonel Garcia-Marques (ISCTE Instituto Universitário de Lisboa) and Margarida Garrido (ISCTE IUL, PI) will receive funding from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia for a research project titled "Shared Representations: A Peek into the Collaborative Memory Toolbox" (volume approx. € 94.000)October 2014
Interview with Gerald Echterhoff regarding social influence on memory for the cover story "Ihre nächsten zehn Jahre" ("Your next ten years") in ZEIT Wissen, October/November 2014, p. 9. See the article (in German)June 2014
"The Comforting Presence of the Facebook Icon": the magazine Pacific Standard published an article on the new findings regarding the influence of Facebook on affiliation tendencies after social exclusion (Knausenberger, Hellmann & Echterhoff, 2014). See the article
November 2013
"Did I do it?": Radio interview with Gerald Echterhoff on observation-induced false memories of self-performance ("Observation Inflation"), live on DRadio Wissen (German National Public Radio), November 11.
Click to listen
July 2013
The German Research Foundation (DFG) has just awarded funding for a project titled "Effects of Communication with Experts on the Evaluation of Ambiguous Scientific Evidence: Cognitive Tuning and Social Tuning" in the Special Priority Program "Science and the Public" (SPP 1409) to Gerald Echterhoff (funding period: 24 months, total volume approx. EUR 142.000)March 2013
Gerald Echterhoff has declined the offer of a professorship for Social Psychology at the University of Osnabrück.
August 2012
Gerald Echterhoff has accepted the invitation to serve as Associate Editor for the European Journal of Social Psychology (EJSP), the flagship journal of the European Association of Social Psychology (EASP).
July 2012
Gerald Echterhoff has received the award for "Best Lecture Class" from the psychology students at the University of Münster. He is utterly delighted.
April 2012
Interview with Gerald Echterhoff on social identity for a feature on the self ("Die Ich-Perspektive") in ZEIT Wissen, May 2012, 60-65.
March 2012
Gerald Echterhoff has been invited to serve as keynote speaker at the main conference ("Transfer of Knowledge") of the European Social Cognition Network (ESCON) in Estoril (Portugal) in September 2012.October 2011
The famous science journalist Shankar Vedantam interviews Gerald Echterhoff for the US broadcasting station NPR (National Public Radio) on the creation of shared reality in communication.August 2011
Gerald Echterhoff contributes expert advice on conflict and conformity in communication in the August issue of the magazine ZEIT Wissen.April 2011
Gerald Echterhoff has been selected from the list of nominations to serve as Associate Editor for the international journal Social Psychology. The selection involved the members of the journal's editorial board, the Fachgruppe Sozialpsychologie (Social Psychology Division of the German Psychological Society), and Hogrefe Publishers. He looks forward to the start of his term in January 2012.March 2011
The cover story of the APS Observer, titled "Reflections on Mirror Neurons" and written by Temma Ehrenfeld, features the research on false memories for action performance from observation (Lindner, Echterhoff et al., 2010).March 2011
Jens Hellmann was the guest expert in the studio of radio broadcast "Lebensart" on revenge, WDR 5 on March 8th, 2011.
March 2011
Radio feature in the program "Forschung Aktuell (Science News)" on Deutschlandfunk about research on false memories for action performance from observing others' actions (Lindner, Echterhoff et al., 2010, Psychological Science), including interviews with Gerald Echterhoff and William Hirst (New School for Social Research, New York). Listen to it : "Forschung aktuell- Trügerische ErinnerungenFebruary 2011
Gerald Echterhoff was interviewed on plagiarism and academic dishonesty in the news show "Aktuelle Stunde" on WDR television (February 19, 2011).February 2011
Research on gender differences in reactions to a partner's infidelity (Bohner, Echterhoff, Glass, Patrzek, & Lampridis, 2010) has been featured in the February issue of the US-based magazine Psychology Today under the title "Infraction Reactions" (p. 28 of the print issue).January 2011
Gerald Echterhoff will serve as teacher at the SoDoc Workshop 2011, supported by Social Psychology Division (Fachgruppe Sozialpsychologie) of the German Psychological Association (DGPs), June 16-19, at LMU Munich.
January 2011
Gerald Echterhoff was interviewed in a TV feature (WDR Lokalzeit) regarding the social and political identity of Northrhine-Westfalia (most populated federal state of Germany formed from historically disparate entities).December 2010
The volume "Grounding Sociality: Neurons, Mind, and Culture" (edited by Gün R. Semin and Gerald Echterhoff) published by Psycholgy Press / Taylor & Francis is out now. You can order the book following: Taylor & FrancisSeptember 2010
Our first demonstration of false memories of performing an action from mere action observation has been published in the highest ranked journal for empirical psychology, Psychological Science. In August it was the most widely read article ever published in the journal: Psychological ScienceThe research has been covered in various newspapers and media outlets, including:
June 2010
A special issue on the topic of socially shared reality edited by Gerald Echterhoff has just been published in the journal Social Cognition (Impact Factor 2009 = 1.67). Social CognitionApril 2010
First European Social Cognition Network Expert Meeting was held from 3rd to 5th February at the University of Kent, Canterbury. The meeting attended by eminent social psychologists specializing in communication and culture, was very inspiring and successful.January 2010
"Forschungsmethoden in Psychologie und Sozialwissenschaften - für Bachelor" by Walter Hussy, Margrit Schreier & Gerald Echterhoff, published by Springer
Follow the link to have a look into the table of contents: Forschungsmethoden in Psychologie und Sozialwissenschaften