Lecturer: ao. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Anton Kühberger
Datum: 12 Jan. 2017 at 16:30
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Decisions should be made based on enduring personal preferences to be considered rational. However, research shows that these preferences are easily manipulable, particularly influenced by a specific, entirely irrelevant detail: the specific description of the decision situation. Under the heading of "framing," this influence of wording on decision-making processes is examined. Decision situations that are structurally and contextually identical are not described in the same words (e.g., a 100ml glass filled with 50ml is simultaneously half full and half empty; the operation with a 90% survival chance also has a 10% death rate).

These descriptions are equivalent from most perspectives, meaning they provide equivalent information. The rational decision-maker should not be guided by the way alternatives are presented. The lecture illustrates the consequences of different presentation styles and discusses the implications for understanding humans as (ir)rational decision-makers. Practical examples focus on the role of description in dealing with risk in various areas of daily life.

Anton Kühberger studied psychology at the University of Salzburg and works there at the Department of Cognition and Development, as well as at the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience. His basic research focuses on decision-making (deciding and judging in risk and uncertainty; thinking and reasoning), and his applied research deals with decision support and understanding probabilities. He also works on the development of research methods for identifying cognitive processes and in the field of meta-research on the question of the meaning and nonsense of significance testing and publication bias.

Lecturer: Max Höllen, M.A.
Date: 09 March 2017 at 16:30
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Are comic creators profit-oriented small business owners or freelance artists? They earn their living with their creativity and want to advance their personal goals with it. Can they benefit from the cultural and creative industries, a growing and innovative sector, and what could support look like that takes into account both cultural and economic interests? The presentation will clarify to what extent comics are perceived as cultural or economic goods and how the art form is classified in cultural operations and in the cultural and creative industries. The focus of the discussion is on the entrepreneurial aspects of creative and artistic creation: Are comic artists freelancers, business owners, entrepreneurs, or even cultural entrepreneurs when it comes to making a living from their work?

Max Höllen is a research associate at the iuh - Institute for Entrepreneurial Action at the University of Mainz, researching Cultural Entrepreneurship and working on a PhD on financing and promoting startups in the cultural and creative industries. His research interest is the intersection (and paradox) of creativity and economics. To this end, he approaches comics through the discourse of art and culture on one hand and economic theories on the other. Max Höllen also draws cartoons and comics himself and is a cultural and creative manager at the Volkshochschule Stuttgart, among other roles.

Lecturer: Dr. Harald Deinsberger-Deinswenger
Date: 06 April 2017 at 16:30
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How can a human-friendly living environment in built environments be scientifically defined? Which levels of human existence are affected by the interaction with the built environment? What needs can and should a built environment fulfill? How can the know-how be best implemented in practice? These are central questions of environmental and architectural psychology, which primarily deal with identifying the influencing factors of built environments and the complex interaction processes between humans and the built environment. As a result, these insights can be used to strengthen positive, supportive influencing factors or create new ones, as well as to reduce, eliminate, or compensate for negative, impairing influencing factors (such as stressors or factors causing illness). The resulting know-how can be implemented in the conception, planning, and design of, for example, residential buildings, offices, schools, kindergartens, hospitals, entire settlements, and much more.

"My long-term research and analysis clearly show that achieving high human quality doesn't necessarily have to be a matter of money, but rather a matter of the right know-how. This applies to social housing or the low-budget sector as well as luxury apartments. Environmental and architectural psychology shows the way!"
Dr. Deinsberger-Deinsweger is the chairman of the Institute for Environmental and Architectural Psychology (IWAP) in Graz and teaches at Graz University of Technology, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Danube University Krems, as well as being a course leader at the Austrian Academy of Psychology in Vienna.

Lecturer: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Jens Blechert
Date: 04 May 2017 at 16:30
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Diets are familiar to many. Even those who are not trying to reduce their weight attempt to avoid overindulging in unhealthy food. In an environment full of temptations, self-regulation is not easy: short-term pleasure is often prioritized over long-term goals. Nutritional psychology seeks to explain why our eating behavior often deviates from hunger and satiety regulation: eating styles such as emotional, restrained, and external eating, as well as craving/food addiction, explain how hedonic eating interferes with our emotional and daily lives and undermines psychological determinants of self-control. When additional psychological problem areas (especially in the affective domain) are added, eating styles can develop into symptoms of eating disorders. The presentation will showcase recent laboratory and field studies that demonstrate the complexity of the problem but also provide some clues to solutions.

I am interested in how emotions, stress, and strict diet goals disrupt and alter the homeostatic processes of food intake. Instead of hunger and satiety, the ubiquity of highly palatable foods and resulting cravings dictate when and what we eat. I investigate these questions using a mix of everyday methods and laboratory studies in both healthy and eating-disordered populations.

Lecturer: Univ.-Prof.ⁱⁿ Dr.ⁱⁿ Sonja Utz
Date: 08 June 2017 at 16:30
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Social media are increasingly being used in professional contexts. Companies rely on enterprise social networks as knowledge management tools, and business networks like Xing or LinkedIn facilitate exchange across organizational boundaries. It is assumed that social media help identify experts in one's network and obtain relevant information. However, there is little empirical research on this topic.
In this presentation, the central theoretical approaches will be introduced first. Then, empirical results will be presented, shedding light on the effects of professional use of social media from various perspectives. A longitudinal study will demonstrate the effects of LinkedIn usage over time, while experiments will illuminate the underlying processes.

Sonja Utz is a professor at Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and leads the Social Media Research Group at the Leibniz Institute for Knowledge Media in Tübingen. She investigates the effects of social media use from media and social psychological perspectives, with a particular focus on professional knowledge exchange via social media.

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Guido Hertel
Date: 05 October 2017 at 16:30
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Presentation slides are available upon request!

Social loafing and free riding are well-established findings in psychological group research, describing how individuals in a team often exert less effort than when working alone (known as motivation losses in teams). In contrast, reliable evidence of motivation gains through teamwork is relatively scarce.
In the presentation, current research findings on motivating effects of teamwork will be described, focusing on the involved psychological processes as well as person- and context-related conditions. Prof. Hertel particularly contrasts individualistic and collectivistic motivations. The findings show that teamwork can indeed lead to impressive increases in effort when specific conditions are considered. These increases are observable not only in the short term in the lab but also in the long term in field studies with professional teams and in high-performance sports.

Guido Hertel is a professor of organizational and economic psychology and managing director of the Institute of Psychology at WWU Münster. His research focuses on cooperative and competitive behavior in teams and negotiations. Additionally, he addresses current challenges in the field of work and organization, especially the increasing digitalization of work, demographic changes, and the integration of refugees. Further information on current publications, etc., can be found at www.uni-muenster.de/OWMS/.

Lecturer: FH-Prof. DI (FH) Dr. Michael Lankes
Date: 07. Apr. 2016

The application of games and playful approaches in domains outside the traditional entertainment sector has significantly increased in recent years. Games can be transferred to areas such as health or business. A common method for incorporating playful approaches is known as "gamification." The goal of the lecture is to provide an overview of gamification. Starting with an attempt to define the term, the basic components of gamified systems will be presented. In addition to a theoretical discussion, the lecture will highlight concrete examples to illustrate the potential of the approach.

FH-Prof. Dr. Michael Lankes teaches and conducts research in the Media Technology and Design and Digital Arts programs at the Hagenberg Campus of the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria (FH OÖ). His interests encompass both the design and the visual creation of computer games. Based on human-computer interaction approaches, he attempts to innovatively relate games to alternative input modalities (such as gaze interaction). Before his position at the FH OÖ, he worked at the ICT&S Center Salzburg, the Ars Electronica Futurelab, and Sony DVDCE, among others.

Lecturer: Dr.ⁱⁿ Susanne M. Schmittat
Date: 02. Jun. 2016

What are the biggest challenges for executives in the coming years? And what competencies are needed to master them optimally? In 2015, the LIMAK Austrian Business School dedicated itself to the systematic analysis of leadership challenges in 2020. Through a mix of personal interviews with more than 20 CEOs and board members, an online study involving 250 executives, and a workshop with selected HR professionals, an aggregated picture of the leadership challenges in 2020 was compiled to better prepare companies for the future. The results of the study and the interfaces of psychology for coping with the identified challenges will be presented in this lecture and discussed in the plenum.

Dr. Schmittat has been a forensic psychologist at the Department of Criminal Law and Forensic Psychology at JKU since August 2015. In previous years, she was a research assistant at the University of Cologne. In the course of her research, Dr. Schmittat deals with confirmatory information processing, false confessions, expertise, and persuasion skills development.

Lecturer: Mag.^a Dr.ⁱⁿ Susanne Summereder
Date: 06. Oct. 2016

What are the greatest challenges for executives in the coming years? And what competencies are needed to master them as effectively as possible? In 2015, the LIMAK Austrian Business School dedicated itself to a systematic analysis of the leadership challenges of 2020. Through a mix of personal interviews with over 20 CEOs and board members, an online study with 250 executives, and a workshop with selected HR professionals, an aggregated picture of the leadership challenges of 2020 was compiled to better prepare companies for the future. The results of the study and the interfaces of psychology for coping with the identified challenges will be presented and discussed in this lecture.

Dr. Mag.a Summereder is the head of LIMAK IN.SPIRE, the division of the LIMAK Austrian Business School in Linz, which specializes in the design and implementation of company-specific executive development programs. Based on company-specific analyses, tailor-made concepts are developed and implemented. To offer executive development at the cutting edge, LIMAK IN.SPIRE conducts an annual study on a current topic.

Lecturer: Univ. Prof. Dr. Karsten Paul
Date: 10. Nov. 2016

AND – WHY DO YOU GO TO WORK?
The usual response to that is that one has to earn a living, after all. In addition to this manifest economic function, employment also has several latent, so to speak "hidden," psychological functions. Thus, employment fulfills the need for status and identity, for social contact, and for giving meaning. So, work not only helps us to secure our livelihood but also stabilizes our mental health. In the lecture, in addition to Marie Jahoda's model of the latent functions of employment (1981, 1996), results from several empirical studies will be presented and discussed in detail.

Prof. Dr. Karsten PAUL has been a temporary professor for Applied Psychology at the Institute for Pedagogy and Psychology since December 2015. Prof. PAUL conducted research at the Chair of Psychology at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg on the psychological effects of unemployment, psychological needs in work and non-work, and cognitive bias in aptitude diagnostics, and is now continuing these research activities at JKU.

Lecturer: Dr. Pascal Burgmer
Date: 07 Dec. 2016

Ideas are cheap – it's the implementation that counts! Many may agree with this assertion, especially when thinking about companies whose success depends on implementing good ideas. Even in science, there is often a long and arduous path between an idea and the final "product" (e.g., publication or approval of a new medication). Nevertheless, people appreciate good ideas, and innovation and creativity are becoming increasingly important in various areas of work and life. Recent studies with children aged 4-6 have shown that a clear preference emerges from around the age of 6: ideas are valued more than work, i.e., their mere implementation. However, a series of social psychological experimental studies with adult participants from different populations have found the opposite preference: adults value work more than ideas. The lecture will highlight explanatory conditions and psychological processes under which adults value work more than ideas.

Dr. Pascal Burgmer is a postdoctoral researcher at the Excellence Center for Social and Economic Behavior (C-SEB) at the University of Cologne. Dr. Burgmer conducts interdisciplinary research at the interface between social psychology and behavioral economics (e.g., consequences of trust/distrust) as well as at the intersection of social psychology and experimental philosophy (e.g., consequences of lay beliefs on metaphysical questions such as the "mind-body problem").