Communication Environments

Everyday Media lab

Duration 07/2025 - open

AI-based conversational agents are increasingly providing health-related information. This project investigates how a chatbot addressing women's health issues is evaluated in terms of usability, satisfaction, support, trustworthiness, and social presence. Questionnaire and usage data provide insights into the relationship between users and chatbots and promote understanding of their use in the healthcare sector.

Everyday Media lab - Multimodal Interaction lab - Perception and Action lab - Knowledge Construction lab

Duration 08/2024 - 04/2026

Our interdisciplinary longitudinal study investigates the evolving dynamics of human-AI interaction over six waves spanning one year. By examining individual, behavioral, and task-related variables, the project aims to uncover how users' trust in, perceptions of, self-efficacy, and willingness to engage with AI systems develop and interrelate over time. The insights gained from this research are essential for better understanding human-machine interaction, a critical foundation for fostering effective collaboration between users and AI systems. This knowledge will inform user-centered AI design and guide the ethical integration of these technologies into various aspects of everyday life.

Everyday Media lab

Duration 01/2024 - open

The world is currently facing a global mental health crisis, with many individuals struggling and insufficient access to professional support. In this context, conversational agents (CAs) have emerged as a promising technological solution. However, there is limited understanding of the psychological processes that drive effective interactions with CAs. This project investigated the role of narrative transportation and user-CA relationships in app engagement and stress outcomes through a survey of users of a mental health app that uses a CA as a mentor to guide users through story- and chat-based interactions. The project contributes to the field by highlighting how narrative engagement and emotional connections with CAs can enhance user experience and app effectiveness.

Knowledge Construction lab

Duration 01/2024 - 12/2024

Sequential collaboration describes a knowledge construction process in which a contributor starts by creating an entry which is sequentially adjusted or maintained by following contributors. This collaboration process can be found for example in Wikipedia. In this project gathering information and making decisions based on information shared in sequential collaboration is compared to group discussions.

Perception and Action lab

Duration 10/2023 - 09/2026

Event perception and cognition theories assume dynamic events are segmented into meaningful chunks of sub-actions with partonomic relationships. This allows viewers to process streaming information in units and predict future states of action based on their expectations and event knowledge. Event models store relevant information for events and guide perception using schemas (or scripts). While event models hold immediately accessible representations stored in long-term memory, working event models process perceptual representations of unfolding activity throughout the event. The studies of this project will shed light on whether event processing in working event models and long-term event schemas are modality-dependent. Considering that the grain of action leads to different levels of processing – with fine-grained events being aggregated into coarse-grained events – understanding modal and amodal representations of fine and coarse context will be important to the perceptual and conceptual organization of event comprehension. Furthermore, this project will explore the role of confidence and metacognitive sensitivity in event cognition. Since sensory information is continuously processed at working event models to predict what will happen next, it is important to know if one’s cognition relies on the perception of event boundaries. Results obtained from metacognitive sensitivity measures will provide further evidence for the event models and their interactions with event schemata. Lastly, this project will address whether event schemata influence the processing of events in general and whether repeated exposure to new events changes their cognition. However, the testing of these questions will be applied using visual and verbal events to observe modality-specific effects of different context grains (fine and coarse).

Perception and Action lab

Duration 07/2023 - open

Generative Artificial Intelligence is capable of generating texts or images based on verbal prompts. With its universal range of application fields and the human-like output quality the interaction with generative AI becomes increasingly similar to the interaction with other humans. How does interaction with generative AI impact human behavior, understanding, and trust, and how can these insights be used to optimize human-machine collaboration?

Perception and Action lab

Duration 07/2023 - 10/2023

Belief in climate change misinformation such as denying its anthropogenicity has been shown to confuse the electorate, and stall political action. While the extent of the public’s incorrect beliefs is comparatively well-understood, its causes are subject to an ongoing debate. One of the most prominent questions centers around the role of social media: Does social media use drive widespread belief in science-related misinformation?

Everyday Media lab

Duration 06/2023 - 05/2026

Different individuals favor different notions of fairness. This PhD project therefore delves into how egocentric biases affect judgments of algorithmic fairness, an issue that often goes unnoticed in the discussion of AI discrimination cases. By understanding the influence of biases on fairness assessments, this project offers insights into improving AI decision-making in diverse domains.

Everyday Media lab

Duration 06/2023 - 05/2026

Scientific discourse is vital to make informed decisions about pressing societal issues. Especially in times of crisis, risks arise from over-simplification, generalization, and instrumentalization of scientific knowledge. The „NewOrder“ project will examine the changing knowledge order of the digital society, in particular, motivated through the increasingly controversial discourse about science in online news and social media.

Everyday Media lab

Duration 06/2023 - 05/2026

High mobility and frequent moves pose a challenge for friendships. How do groups of friends who live in different places stay connected? Existing media such as WhatsApp or Zoom provide limited opportunities to feel close to one's own friends, while still requiring the users' attention. In the VREUNDE project, hybrid tools are to be created with which groups of friends can perform their social activities even over distance and thus create a feeling of connectedness as a group.

Knowledge Construction lab

Duration 03/2023 - open

Anchoring was first discovered by Tversky and Kahneman (1974) almost 50 years ago and describes the phenomenon that an irrelevant numeric value (anchor) influences a subsequent numerical estimate. Whereas the anchoring effect has been replicated extensively, influences on anchoring are still often unclear and inconclusive. This project investigates the role of expertise on anchoring.

Knowledge Construction lab

Duration 01/2023 - open

Robots and artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly serving as collaborative partners for humans. Text-based chatbots, which enable humans to communicate with a technical system through natural language, have gained popularity in a variety of application areas. So far, little is known about the processes involved in teams consisting of humans and AI. Therefore, the focus of this dissertation project is to explore relationships between team composition and team performance and dynamics.

Everyday Media lab

Duration 01/2023 - open

Since the introduction of ChatGPT in November 2022, the use of artificial intelligence (AI), especially AI-based chatbots, has become accessible to many people. This project investigates how people use ChatGPT and comparable chatbots for knowledge search and as a creativity tool, both in professional and private settings. The studies thus contribute to the practice fields knowledge work with digital media and internet use. Many search engine providers integrate AI-based chatbots, which are based on so-called large language models (LLMs), into their services, meaning that they are also used by many for knowledge processes such as information searches. However, the adoption of AI-generated content harbors risks, as the technology also presents incorrect information very confidently. The current research project aims to better understand the opportunities and risks of using LLM-based chatbots in everyday professional and private life. Two initial experiments show that the way in which information is presented by ChatGPT or comparable chatbots influences the credibility assessment. The same information is perceived as more credible when it is presented as a dialog - whether typed with ChatGPT or spoken by a voice assistant such as Alexa - than when it is presented as static text. This type of presentation also makes it more difficult to identify incorrect information. In survey studies with representative samples and a longitudinal study with knowledge workers, we also investigate how people use LLM-based chatbots for different tasks, to what extent this is associated with information benefits and higher creativity, and which factors predict successful use.

Knowledge Construction lab

Duration 01/2023 - 12/2024

Sequential collaboration describes a knowledge construction process often found in online collaborative projects such as Wikipedia. In this process a contributor starts by creating an entry which is sequentially adjusted or maintained by following contributors. This project examines the gathering information and making decisions based on these information in sequential collaboration compared to widely used group discussions to gain further insights into the construction process of collaborative knowledge.

Knowledge Construction lab

Duration 11/2022 - 04/2026

News about world events, as well as a look at recent history, often show: Passionate protests are important drivers of social change and undertaken for a wide variety of causes. This type of joint action, directed toward a shared goal, is known as collective action. But what exactly motivates people to participate in demonstrations, sign petitions, and otherwise engage in collective action?

Everyday Media lab

Duration 10/2022 - open

This PhD project studies the behaviors of social bots, i.e., social media accounts controlled by software or algorithms rather than humans, in online science communication, especially their interactions with human accounts, and the effect of these behaviors: what kind of content are social bots more likely to (re-)post? How and to what extent does social bot activity influence the public perception of science? And how could human users detect social bots to avoid their influence?

Knowledge Construction lab

Duration 08/2022 - open

With the spread of the Internet and the emerging of collaborative online projects such as Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap, collaboration in groups also changed radically. Instead of in-person groups sharing information and making decisions together, contributors in sequential collaboration form a sequential chain in which the first contributor creates an entry independently which can be edited and improved or maintained by following contributors. This project focuses whether contributors generate accurate estimates in sequential collaboration and which conditions foster or hinder this process.

Everyday Media lab

Duration 06/2022 - open

The utilization of AI-powered voice assistants (VAs) has recently become more prevalent as an emerging digital technology that aids users in their daily activities, leading also to the emergence of various forms of communication with users beyond simple commands. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how people perceive and relate to disembodied, intelligent and voice-assisted technologies in communication. Given that a significant part of communication with these virtual actors revolves around information, factors such as the credibility and perceived intelligence of the source have become more important.

Perception and Action lab

Duration 04/2022 - open

How do citizens form beliefs about politicized topics science such as climate change, COVID-19 or vaccinations? In this project, we illuminate the role of metacognition, the insight that citizens have into the reliability and fallibility of their own knowledge and reasoning.

Duration 04/2022 - 09/2023

Even when new information or situations suggest new perspectives, people often stick to their previous attitudes and behaviors. For example, when they search for information on the internet or are confronted with it via media, they prefer statements that are in line with previous beliefs to those that deviate from them. Such confirmatory tendencies can have negative consequences such as polarizing attitudes or making suboptimal decisions. A flexible processing style in dealing with new information could counteract this.

Knowledge Construction lab

Duration 12/2021 - 11/2026

A glance at the news makes it clear: All over the world, people are taking to the streets for various reasons. Their passionate commitment to (or against) a cause is often the result of social influence, which today often occurs via emotionalised online communication. But what exactly motivates people to participate in demonstrations, sign petitions, and otherwise engage collectively?

Everyday Media lab

Duration 10/2020 - 09/2023

More than half a billion people worldwide use professional social online networks such as LinkedIn. The objective of this DFG-funded project is to learn more about the positive effects social networking use provides for knowledge workers. 

Multimodal Interaction lab

Duration 01/2018 - open

Digitalization is permeating numerous areas of life and constantly offering new opportunities - in private life, at school, and in organizations. Apps are being used to combat the pandemic, for example; robots, artificial intelligence (AI), and virtual reality (VR) support people in the classroom and at work. These new technologies bring possibilities, but also many challenges with them - for instance for school teachers in class, or for leaders and their employees in organizations. As such, users are not always enthusiastic about new technologies and the changes these technologies bring with them from the very first minute - even in cases in which users likely objectively benefit from these changes.

Duration

Numerous Conspiracy Theories are circulating online about topics such as climate change, the impact of vaccinations, and other topics of societal relevance. Such conspiracy theories are often extremely popular – but at the same time, they can be dangerous for society, as they can lead to less political and personal engagement, and to less trust in general as well as towards authorities. Despite their popularity, little is yet known about the relationship between conspirational thinking and social influence, that is, about the social factors that play a role in the development and persistence of conspiracy theories. This research project aimed to better understand this relationship and to examine ways to limit the belief in and impact of conspiracy theories.

Knowledge Construction lab

Duration 06/2025 - 05/2026

This project investigates how collaboration with a disagreeing Large Language Model (LLM) affects the change of individual beliefs. Thereby, we assess how digital spaces—contrary to their tendency toward polarization and echo chambers—can become places of constructive discourse. Building on research in intergroup processes, the project examines whether so-called adversarial collaboration, the joint creation of a text with a disagreeing LLM, leads to belief updating.

Perception and Action lab

Duration 08/2024 - open

In a systematic literature analysis, psychological research conducted since the end of the Cold War on people’s responses to the threat of nuclear weapons is examined. The aim is to provide an evidence-based overview of how perception, emotion, and behavior in the face of nuclear risks have been studied—offering insights relevant to education, media, and political communication in times of growing global uncertainty. More than three decades after the last comprehensive reviews of psychological responses to nuclear threats, there is a renewed need to assess the current state of research. The analysis investigates which topics and questions have been addressed, which methods have been applied, and to what extent a coherent research community has developed. The literature review is based on a systematic search in Web of Science and SCOPUS. Out of more than 18,000 identified publications, 256 met the criteria for detailed evaluation. These studies were analyzed with regard to publication trends, author networks, sampling strategies, and measurement instruments. The findings indicate a re-emerging but still weakly connected field of research. A coherent research community has not yet fully formed, and many studies remain isolated efforts with limited generalizability. At the same time, increasing methodological diversity and growing scholarly interest in the societal relevance of nuclear threats can be observed. Overall, the results provide a foundation for future research on global threat perception and its communication in educational and public contexts.

Perception and Action lab

Duration 01/2024 - open

This study examines whether personalized large language models (LLMs) can influence people’s attitudes and beliefs about climate change. In a controlled online experiment, participants interact with AI systems differing in personalization and content. The project aims to assess shifts in climate concern, policy preferences, and behavioral intentions—informing the responsible use of AI for climate communication and education. The project investigates how conversational AI can support or hinder engagement with climate issues.

Perception and Action lab

Duration 01/2024 - open

This secondary analysis of four large, nationally representative datasets examines how political ideology relates to metacognitive confidence in detecting political misinformation. The study investigates whether individuals with more extreme political views—regardless of ideological direction—display higher confidence in their judgments than politically moderate individuals. A symmetric relationship is expected, with metacognitive overconfidence being more pronounced at ideological extremes, while showing no systematic differences between conservatives and liberals. The analyses combine frequentist and Bayesian models to precisely quantify effects of ideological direction and extremity. The findings will provide new evidence on the role of metacognition in political judgment and belief formation.

Perception and Action lab

Duration 03/2023 - open

While historically, the aim of propaganda was to convince citizens of a certain agenda, novel forms of disinformation come with a different goal in mind: To confuse, rather than convince. Or, as former president Trump’s advisor Steve Bannon put it: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit”. Although this zone-flooding strategy poses a serious threat to democratic functioning, it currently lacks empirical investigation that maps out its effects on citizens. We conduct a rigorous, pre-registered investigation into the effects of zone-flooding that harnesses state of the art-methods from Signal Detection Theory and metacognition to illuminate pressing questions: Does zone-flooding affect citizens’ ability to distinguish truth from falsehood? Does it affect their insight into the accuracy of this distinction? Does it render citizens more skeptical or more gullible? And are these effects politically symmetrical?

Perception and Action lab

Duration 02/2022 - 12/2025

The comprehension of different types of narratives, such as text, pictures, or comics, is important for societal participation. This dissertation project investigates how narrative comprehension changes with age and which factors contribute positively or negatively to narrative comprehension. These findings are essential for the development of interventions for different age groups and thus for greater societal participation.

Perception and Action lab - Realistic Depictions lab

Duration 12/2021 - 11/2025

In various research areas and topics such as climate change or testimonies it has already been demonstrated that mental representations are influenced by true and false information. Problematically, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify false information in our daily lives. Furthermore, new technologies simplify the creation of realistic-looking false messages in media. This dissertation project, therefore, addresses the question of how discriminability of information influences mental representations.

Perception and Action lab

Duration 02/2021 - 01/2025

As the world becomes increasingly technologically forward, the presence of artificial agents in day-to-day life also becomes more apparent. Studying the interaction between humans and artificial agents, such as robots, has long been in the research spotlight. While research in this field is traditionally focused on how robots can improve our lives, this PhD project aims at flipping the focus on humans helping robots.

Everyday Media lab

Duration 01/2021 - 11/2024

With the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, many meetings in personal, educational, and professional contexts have been moved to the virtual realm. In a series of experiments and survey studies, this project aims at identifying and better understanding both effects and success factors of virtual meetings. One primary focus of the investigations is individual camera use and its positive and negative effects.

Duration 11/2020 - 10/2024

Humans often tend to treat technical systems as social actors and ascribe them human-like characteristics (e.g., when telling a computer to work faster). With the ongoing introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI), this tendency is likely to increase – as technical systems become more and more capable (e.g., of solving complex problems or adapting to individual users) and are often even explicitly designed to appear human-like.  

Perception and Action lab

Duration 10/2020 - open

Do people know about their own knowledge? And how does this relate to their experience and behavior? In this project, we investigate how insight into ones’ own cognition relates to information selection and processing, as well as opinion and judgment formation.

Perception and Action lab

Duration 10/2020 - open

In societal discourse, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is strongly tied with both opportunities and risks. In this project, it is investigated how humans perceive the risks of AI and how their risk assessments are associated with psychological factors like prior knowledge and judgmental confidence. The behavioral consequences of risk perception are investigated, as well as intervention methods aimed at raising an awareness of AI risks.

Duration 10/2020 - 09/2024

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly involved in written online communication and is already influencing the form of messages we receive. Some of these AI-based programs target interpersonal processes and perceptions (e.g. a message’s sender making a positive impression on the recipient) through modifications of message language. However, as AIs have gained a degree of autonomy in their (suggested) modifications, the line between human and technological factors in written online communication has become blurred. In fact, the actual effects of such programs on the users (i.e. the senders of AI-supported messages), the communication process, and the recipients of such modified messages remain largely unclear.

Multimodal Interaction lab - Realistic Depictions lab

Duration 10/2020 - 09/2024

This research project, which is part of the research network "Human-Agent-Interaction", investigates how laypersons (and literary experts) perceive and evaluate an artificial intelligence (AI) based writing tool that produces creative output such as short narrative texts and poems. How credible, creative, and easy to read are the outputs of such a GPT-3-based writing tool?

Everyday Media lab

Duration 07/2020 - 06/2024

With the rise of artificial intelligence, organizations are increasingly engaging with consumers through automated systems. This project explores how users perceive interactions with text-based dialogue systems, or "chatbots," which use natural language to communicate. Commonly employed in customer service and product advice via websites or messaging platforms, chatbots raise key questions about whether users prefer human agents over automated systems, and how human-like characteristics of chatbots—both verbal and non-verbal—affect user engagement and satisfaction.

Perception and Action lab

Duration 07/2020 - 06/2024

The human environment is populated by other agents. Other humans make up an important part of this, but animals and increasingly autonomously acting machines, i.e., artificial agents, also act without explicit prompting. As a result, their actions are sometimes incomprehensible. This hinders joint work, which is meant to be facilitated by automation. An important aspect of any interaction with other agents is understanding the other. This includes assessing the capabilities of the other person. In a cooperative situation, it is important to be able to assess how much you can rely on your partner. In a competitive situation, you need to assess in which aspects you are superior.

Everyday Media lab

Duration 03/2020 - 11/2024

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has drastically changed the lives of many people, causing uncertainty, stress and anxiety. This project investigates how people use social media, podcasts, news and entertainment to cope with these feelings. Additionally, we focus on how media use is related to successful coping and how media use is related to knowledge and preventive behavior.

Everyday Media lab

Duration 05/2018 - 12/2024

Most news on social media are only skimmed and not read attentively. However, regular skimming of such messages is by no means useless, but can help to develop so-called ambient awareness, an awareness of who is doing what and who knows what in the network. Based on preliminary work from the ERC project ReDeftie, the underlying processes and effects will be further investigated.

Everyday Media lab

Duration 04/2018 - open

The video-sharing platform YouTube is meanwhile the 2nd largest search engine. “How to…” videos can be found for almost any topic – ranging from make-up tips over solutions for software problems to reparing washing machines. These videos can provide an easy and cheap access to learning opportunities for everybody. How frequently are they used for informal learning and which role does the instructor play?

Everyday Media lab

Duration 03/2018 - 08/2024

Crises are frequent in sport, be they doping or poor performance. How do such crises influence confidence in athletes and ultimately the demand for sporting events? Most professional athletes and teams now have profiles on social media such as Facebook or Instagram. Do these more direct interactions with athletes (comments, likes) lead to a stronger bond that can mitigate the negative effects of a crisis?

Duration 06/2016 - 10/2023

Universities and organizations alike often communicate social norms to their members. These norms imply expected types of behavior. In the last years, ‘excellence’ has become increasingly important: Numerous universities and organizations emphasize, for instance, on their websites or internal communication platforms, the importance of excellent performance and the premium quality of their products. How do members respond to such norms about excellence?

Duration 06/2013 - 01/2024

In many situations, groups play an important role: Members of a team work on projects collaboratively, students form learning groups, and members of online groups discuss issues that are important to them. In this context, this dissertation project investigates two key questions: How do group members react when another member of their group does not fulfill their expectations regarding appropriate behavior? And when do they show a certain reaction?

Multimodal Interaction lab

Duration 01/2013 - open

The use and application of interactive multi-touch displays increase continuously. Therefore, touch-based user interfaces like multi-touch tables, tablets or smartphones can be found in many public facilities and private households today. These user interfaces allow direct manipulation of external representations with the hands without the need for additional and indirect interaction devices (e.g., mouse). Thus, the question arises as to how manual interactions should be designed to support information processing.

Perception and Action lab

Duration 01/2012 - open

It is generally believed that humans prefer information that confirms their attitudes and avoid information that represents opposing views. Striving for confirmation and congeniality are also held responsible for a number of toxic phenomena on the Internet, such as the emergence of echo chambers and filter bubbles, the polarization of society, or the dissemination of misinformation. The present project investigates how people deal with opposing opinions – are they really ignored?

Multimodal Interaction lab

Duration 01/2008 - 12/2023

The WWW is characterized by an unprecedented amount of information and a high heterogeneity of information quality. For a successful information search, for example, about a conflicting science-related or medical issue, thus, it is often important to evaluate the information sources regarding their trustworthiness and to compare and weigh (potentially conflicting) information from multiple sources. In this project we investigate through eyetracking analyses and log file data, verbal protocols, as well as argumentative summaries how Web users evaluate and process information during Web search about conflicting topics. Specifically, the project aims at examining how certain user characteristics and certain text characteristics influence source evaluations during Web search.

Multimodal Interaction lab

Duration 01/2008 - 12/2023

The WWW offers easy and fast access to a vast amount of information, which, however, can vary greatly in its quality. Previous empirical studies have shown that both school students and adults don’t often spontaneously pay attention to and critically evaluate where the information stems from. Therefore, this project investigates different approaches how Web users can be supported in their evaluation and selection of information during Web search.