Due to generous funding by the Austrian Research Agency FWF START Program, my Political and Intercultural Psychology group is HIRING PhD candidates and/or a Post-Doc!

Our project is on deviance in task groups, i.e., how groups deal with members who perform poorly, very well, bring up conflicting information or suggest new approaches to solving a task at hand. We’ve recently published on the topic (Thürmer & Kunze, 2023, JPSP; Thürmer, 2024, GPIR), and now want to investigate these processes in interacting groups and with intensive longitudinal process measures, as well as large-scale online studies.
Although this is a basic-research project, my group has a track record in the research areas of political polarization (Thürmer & McCrea, 2023), health decisions/vaccination/nutritional styles (McCrea et al., in press; Thürmer & McCrea, 2022; Thürmer et al., 2022), and team performance (Thürmer et al., 2020). So we can support PhD projects on these or related topics.

We are looking for candidates holding a Master’s degree (and a PhD, for the post-doc position) in psychology or neighboring fields with experience in conducting large-scale quantitative online and lab experiments, ideally also in interactive settings (.e., where people are actually working together) and conducting analyses in R. Experience with the survey framework formR (www.formR.org), advanced statistical analyses and visualization in R, and emotion recognition software (e.g., FaceReader) as well as an international publication record are considered assets. Required personal skills include fluent written and spoken academic English, solution-focused work style, and personal initiative. The positions are 100% research (running experiments, analyzing data, publishing papers in international journals), with potential opportunities to gather teaching and/or admin experience. The PhD-level positions are 30-hours/week for project work, the post-doc 40 hours/week; positions will be paid according to the collective bargaining agreement, § 26, group B1 (PhD-level € 2.683,50 gross; PostDoc € 4.752,30 gross; 14 × year). Contracts will initially be limited to one year with up to two-year extensions (total: up to three years) after successful on-boarding/evaluation.

Salzburg is a picturesque, mid-sized town in the middle of the Alps (think: Sound of Music!). It is best known for its yearly Opera festival, the Salzburger Festspiele, and has some of the world’s best ski slopes, hiking trails, and climbing spots. When you join the University of Salzburg, you will have access to many perks, including mandatory universal health-care and the university sports program. Many of the courses are run at the near-by Austrian Olympic training center or the many ski/climbing spots and alpine lakes in the area. Salzburg has well-connected train stations (about 90 min to Munich, 2:30 h to Vienna, 5h to Zurich) and an international airport. The psychology department is one of the leading psychology research hubs in Austria.

Preferred starting date is June 1, 2024 (later starting dates can be discussed). Please submit your application including your letter of motivation, CV, up to two letters of recommendation, and transcripts in one pdf-file by April 10, 2024 to pip@plus.ac.at. Please do not hesitate to contact me (Lukas.thuermer@plus.ac.at) if you have any questions regarding the positions, moving to Salzburg or the PIP Group.

The attachment contains the advertisement and the links to papers.