Student Research Assistant (m/f/div)

for Project on Improving Moral Decision-Making through systematic reflection
(20 hours per week)

The Max Planck Research Group Rationality Enhancement (Dr. Falk Lieder) at the MPI for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, and the Organizational Leadership and Diversity Group (Dr. Ksenia Keplinger) at the MPI for Intelligent Systems, Stuttgart, are looking for a student research assistant (m/f/div) who will work 20 per week on a project about promoting altruistic decision-making through systematic reflection. The expected start date is March 1, 2023.

The work will take place in Tübingen. The formal requirement for employment is enrollment at a German university. The contract period is 10 months. The probationary period is one month.

Your tasks:

Creating online surveys and online experiments
Running online experiments on the online study platform Prolific
Statistical data analysis
Modifying the configuration of an existing chatbot to incorporate a new intervention
Creating and running a longitudinal field experiment where participants use chatbots
Participate in writing one or more scientific articles about the results

Your profile:

interested in understanding and improving moral decision-making

Ability to learn advanced IT skills with minimal instruction
Conscientiousness
At least basic knowledge of empirical methods, data analysis, and statistics
Good communication skills in written and spoken English

Optional qualifications that would be helpful but are not required:

Knowledge of ethics, altruism, and moral decision-making (e.g., utilitarianism vs. deontology)
Experience with online survey software (e.g., Qualtrics or SoSci Survey)
Experience with data analysis in R or Python
Experience with Git
Experience with working on the command line
Experience with online study platforms, such as Prolific or MTurk
Experience with developing and deploying web applications (Heroku, JavaScript, node.js, JSON, MongoDB)
Knowledge about leadership or decision-making in organizations
Knowledge about bounded ethicality or ethical leadership

We offer:

The hourly wage for Bachelor students is €12.00 per hour. Master's students with a corresponding bachelor's degree receive €12.68 per hour.

The position offers you the opportunity to contribute to the development of digital interventions for promoting ethical leadership, co-author scientific publications resulting from the project, and expand your skills and knowledge about creating and running online experiments, designing and evaluating digital interventions, and research on decision-making, altruism, and leadership. The project is also suitable for a master’s thesis or bachelor’s thesis.

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.

Contact and Application:

The application deadline is 10.02.2023. Your application should include a CV, a list of 1–3 people who can speak to your suitability for the position and their contact details, a letter of motivation and information on how you have acquired or demonstrated some of the relevant qualifications listed above.

Please upload your application documents as one pdf file to our applicant portal (https://jobs.is.mpg.de/7e2nr )

If you prefer to send a hard copy application, please send it to:
Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems
Dr. Falk Lieder
Max Planck Ring 4
72076 Tuebingen