Postdoc or Senior Researcher (m/f/x) in Psychology and Social Neuroscience

The Social Neuroscience Lab of the Max Planck Society, located in the heart of Berlin, is seeking to recruit an excellent

Postdoc or Senior Researcher (m/f/x) in Psychology and Social Neuroscience

The position is part of the Social Neuroscience Lab, scientifically headed by Prof. Dr. Tania Singer (www.social.mpg.de, www.taniasinger.de). The successful candidate will be involved in all aspects of research in the field of a new project, the Edu:Social project. This was inspired by a previous successful project of the lab, the CovSocial project (www.covsocial.de) which focused on strengthening mental health through socio-emotional and mindfulness-based app-based online training during the Covid 19 pandemic. The Edu:Social project will now focus on strengthening resilience, social skills, and mental health in school and health care settings through several weeks of online mental training using contemplative practices and especially dyadic partner exercises. Both, teachers and doctors are at high risk of burnout and need daily social skills such as empathy and perspective taking for their everyday working life. We will assess the effects of the intervention on outcome measures as varied as psychological laboratory tasks, questionnaires, app-based ecological momentary assessment, biopsychological stress and immune markers as well as more system-related measures (e.g., burn-out rates, team- or classroom wellbeing, etc.). The position is initially designed for three years and devoted to research with no teaching required (but possible) and minimal administrative duties.

Your tasks

• Conduct psychological experiments in education / school or healthcare settings to measure the effects of mental training in different domains (e.g., theory of mind, attention, compassion, emotion regulation, prosocial behavior and cooperation)
• Implement modern technologies to measure subjective well-being and socio- emotional experiences in everyday life, e.g., mobile phone and app-based methods and event sampling
• Develop new paradigms to assess system-related changes in wellbeing and performance of an entire school / class-room or department / hospital
• Collect biomarkers (stress markers, immune markers, genetics, etc.)
• Participate in designing short-term mental training interventions based on mindfulness techniques as well as innovative 'contemplative dyads', but adapted to education and healthcare settings

Your qualifications

• You have successfully completed your dissertation and may already have experience as a Postdoc. You have already successfully published at a high scientific level and made other excellent scientific achievements
• You have expertise in biological, developmental, social psychology and/or social neuroscience and an interest in contemplative studies (e.g., mindfulness and compassion interventions) and translational field research
• You have a high command of the German language
• Interest in working with teachers and children as well as doctors, nurses, medical students, and in translational research
• You have experience in the development and implementation of psychological experiments and in the use of modern technologies for the collection of psychological data in everyday life (e.g., Palm Pilots, mobile phones, internet, event sampling)
• In-depth excellent knowledge of modern statistical analysis methods (e.g., time series analysis, structural equation models, etc.) and the use of software packages (e.g., SPSS, R, MATLAB, etc.)
• You are proficient with the analysis of longitudinal data using linear mixed models and latent growth / latent change models and have experience with structural equation models in the lavaan framework
• You enjoy working in an academic ambit with high work commitment. You are able to work independently but also to work in a team and your communication skills are excellent

Your application

Please send us your complete application documents in English or German, including a letter of moti­vation, your CV as well as three references by e-mail to job.application@social.mpg.de. Application review will continue until the position is filled, but latest January 2024. The position is a full-time posi­tion and based on the gross salary levels of the public sector (TVöD, E 13) and for a duration of three years with possible extension. Shortlisted candidates will be invited to Berlin, Germany or interviewed online. The Max Planck Society is committed to increasing the number of individuals with disabilities in its workforce and therefore encourages applications from such qualified individuals. Furthermore, the Max Planck Society seeks to increase the number of women in those areas where they are under­represented and therefore explicitly encourages women to apply. Social Neuroscience Lab
Max Planck Society JFK Haus
Bertha-Benz-Straße 3
10557 Berlin Contact for more information
Tel.: +49 30 2360-8150
E-mail: office@social.mpg.de