Efficiently responding to others’ emotions has great survival value, especially for social species, such as primates, who establish close, long-term bonds with group members. The closest living relatives to humans are the chimpanzee and the bonobo. Studying these species, and comparing them on the exact…

Here I propose to study the relationship between autonomic pupil-synchronisation and trust, at the behavioural and neural level, and examine a targeted set of possible contextual moderators.

How do processes of coalition-formation influence patterns of decision-making in the European Union?

Due to technological and societal developments, we are being flooded with more information than our brains can process. How does this affect our decision-making, both as individuals and as a society? And can we learn to make better choices? This is what Lotte van Dillen will explore with her profess…

Research in Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science focuses on the dynamics and the interaction of political institutions, individual decision-making, and collective behaviour.

What are the essential determinants of (dis)trust? And, what are the effects of being (dis)trusted?

This article explores the concept of issue prioritisation within the context of public administration research, focusing on decision-making processes.

How can teachers be motivated by their students’ data in making stepwise changes to their teaching practices?

In science, it is of vital importance that multiple studies corroborate the same result. Researchers therefore need to know all the details of previous experiments in order to implement the procedures as exactly as possible. However, this is becoming a major problem in neuroscience, as animal studies…

How do individuals make decisions? What determines the quality of group decisions? When and why do people cooperate with others? How does intergroup competition evolve?

The focus of the Multicriteria Optimization and Decision Analysis (MODA) group is to develop foundations of methods in multi-objective optimization.

PACES is an innovative, inter-disciplinary and multi-level research project that asks, How do changes in society, individual life experiences and migration policy shape decisions to stay or to migrate over time and across countries? And how can this knowledge inform future migration policies and gov…

During eye contact, people tend to mirror the pupil size of the person they are conversing with. This social mechanism is related to the trust an individual has in the person they are talking to, according to research by psychologists at Leiden University. Publication in PNAS.

Our project focuses on the analysis of decision-making processes in the European Union (EU) and explores how approaches and tools to understand decision-making found in both the Natural and the Social Sciences can be linked, knowledge between these traditions exchanged and synergies utilized. To explore…

Simona Demková, Assistant professor at the Europa Institute of Leiden University, publishes her book ‘Automated Decision-Making and Effective Remedies: The New Dynamics in the Protection of EU Fundamental Rights in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice’.

This minor focuses on how our thoughts, emotions and behaviour are influenced by other people, and how we influence other people.

What is the relation between the experience and the act of exclusion?

What political factors affect the speed or duration of EU legislative decision-making?

This thesis examines the complexity of legislative decisions within the EU, with a specific focus on the Council of the EU.

We present an extensive study of methods for exactly solving stochastic constraint (optimisation) problems (SCPs) in network analysis. These problems are prevalent in science, governance and industry.

Every day, we make numerous decisions, from choosing what to eat to how we interpret the world around us. Traditionally, researchers have assumed that a key part of our decision-making process, namely the decision criterion, stays stable over time. However, increasing evidence suggests that instead…

The starting point for this research project is the notion that the human brain is susceptible to all kinds of fallacies and biases that affect our perceptions and influence our reasoning outside of our conscious awareness. Indeed, most people think they are merely observing facts and that they process…

Studies of perceptual decision-making typically present the same stimulus repeatedly over the course of an experimental session but ignore the order of these observations, assuming unrealistic stability of decision strategies over trials. However, even ‘stable,’ ‘steady-state,’ or ‘expert’ decision-making…

Cognitive psychologists Eliska Prochazkova and Mariska Kret from Leiden University have won an Ig Nobel Prize for their research into the romantic click between people. They discovered that attraction between people can be predicted by synchrony in heart rate and skin conductance.

The coronacrisis is emerging as the ultimate test for political leaders. How do national political leaders get ahead or behind ‘the curve’ of fast-changing dynamics. Martin Lodge (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Arjen Boin (Leiden University Institute of Political Science) look…

Is willingness to receive Covid-19 vaccine affected by social relationships? To what degree do relationships convey information, social pressure and role-models that alter individual’s willingness to be vaccinated?

The consequences of social tendencies for the legislation and institutions in the fields of social security, the labor market policy and pension reform are examined in this multdisciplinary research program..

This article investigates which factors most influence individuals’ decisions to engage in conversations about risk.

To easily take part in group decision-making research, Jörg Gross, Assistent Professor Social and Organisational Psychology, launched a platform that allows students at the social interaction lab. Sign up to receive invitations if you are interested in taking part in on-going scientific studies in the…

Why does social anxiety increase in adolescence and how does it grow out of control in some adolescents?

As a research project between four Jean Monnet Chairs - two located in Europe, one in Canada and one in the U.S. -- the project DEUBAL has been approved in 2010 for co-financing by the European Commission. DEUBAL aims to study changes in European decision-making due to the Lisbon Treaty, by a combination…

In this article, Amandine Lerusse, investigates how the order of performance information affects local politicians’ issue prioritisation decisions.

This thesis, conducted in the framework of ERC Starting grant project BABYLON (PI: Caroline Waerzeggers), presents an investigation into Babylonian society, focusing on the city of Borsippa during Neo-Babylonian and early Persian rule (c. 620-484 BCE).

Observational, cognitive and physiological measurements in social contexts.

This project aims at studying the social media reception of African publications as covered by the most important “altmetric” sources.

‘What a relief,’ was psychologist Mariska Kret’s reaction to the news of her Vidi grant from the national science financier NWO. The grant makes it possible for her to carry out new research into emotions and trust in patients with a social anxiety disorder and patients with autism.

This dissertation takes an important step in understanding the phenomenon of non-take-up of social support and what it means for contemporary social policies.

Making predictions about emotional problems or the effects of air pollution: Marjolein Fokkema’s algorithms are getting better at this all the time. She is making her algorithms increasingly flexible, so they can predict not just characteristics at one particular moment, but also how skills, for example,…

The bachelor's programmes at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs, based in the city of international cooperation and politics – The Hague – prepare you for a future in governance, leadership, and diplomacy. In the administrative heart of the Netherlands, you will learn to tackle the challenges…