The Social Neuroscience Lab of the Max Planck Society situated in the heart of Berlin, Germany, invites applications for 2 Postdoc or Senior Researcher Positions in Developmental Psychology and in Social Neuroscience.

 

The positions are part of a new and upbuilding lab under the scientific supervision of Prof. Dr. Tania Singer, situated in the heart of Berlin, Germany, in Haus5 on Campus Nord of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (www.social.mpg.de). The lab investigates the foundations of human sociality, and more specifically the neural, developmental and hormonal mechanisms underlying social cognition and emotions and prosocial behaviors as well as their plasticity through contemplative mental trainings. The successful candidates will be involved in all aspects of research in the domain of developmental- and social psychology and/or social neuroscience. On the one hand, the candidates will be able to publish on a huge already acquired data set in the context of the ReSource Project, a 9-month longitudinal mental training study on mindfulness and compassion, including functional- and structural brain-, autonomic- and behavioral data as well as daily subjective wellbeing measures and qualitative interviews (www.resource-project.org). On the other hand, successful candidates will develop and perform new experiments in the field investigating the effects of affective and cognitive mental training on the improvement of social skills (e.g., empathy, compassion, Theory of Mind, attention), prosocial behaviors and mental health in educational (schools) and health care environments (hospitals etc.). The position is devoted to research with no requirements of teaching and minimal administrative duties.

Job Description

  • Conducting psychological experiments in school or health care environments to assess the effects of mental training intervention in various domains (e.g., Theory of Mind, attention, compassion, emotion regulation, prosocial behavior and   cooperation)
  • Implementation of contemporary technologies for the assessment of subjective wellbeing and socio-emotional experiences in daily life (e.g., event-sampling methods based on mobile phones and apps).
  • Participation in designing short-term mental training interventions based on techniques such as the “Contemplative Dyads” developed in the Resource Project, but adapted to educational and health care environments.
  • Interest in working with children and/or medical professions and translational research.
  • Interdisciplinary collaboration with experts in psychobiology (e.g., stress physiology) and other fields of expertise.

Job requirements

The successful candidates have finished their PhD and may have held a postdoctoral position. They show evidence of high scholarly promise in the form of publications and other academic achievements. He/She shows expertise in the fields of developmental- and social psychology and/or social neuroscience and an interest in contemplative studies (e.g., mindfulness- and compassion interventions) and translational field research. He/She has experience in developing and running psychological experiments and using modern technologies for the psychological assessment in daily life and in ecologically valid environments (e.g., palm pilots, mobile phones, internet or event-sampling studies). Further, he/she has in depth expertise in modern statistical analysis methods and the use of software packages (e.g. SPSS, R, MATLAB etc.). He/She likes independent work but is also a team-player and has excellent communication skills.

 

For further details, see www.social.mpg.de or contact Juliane Domke (office@social.mpg.de). Applications, including a CV, list of publications, motivation letter, and 3 references, should be sent to Juliane Domke (office@social.mpg.de) via email as a single PDF file (in English and, if possible, also in German), with your name as the file name. Review of applications will continue until the positions are filled. Each position is based on the gross salary levels of the public sector (TVöD, E13) and for a duration of two years with possible extension. The positions are open as of January 2020. Shortlisted candidates will be invited to the Social Neuroscience Lab in Berlin, Germany.

 

The Max Planck Society is an equal opportunity employer and explicitly encourages women and handicapped individuals to apply.

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