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Ulrich Von Hecker Diploma Hamburg, PhD Habilitation Berlin

Dr Ulrich Von Hecker

Diploma Hamburg, PhD Habilitation Berlin

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Available for postgraduate supervision

Teams and roles for Ulrich Von Hecker

Overview

Research summary

I am interested in how we represent the social world around us. This involves the way our cognitive system uses spatial processes to subserve abstract reasoning. This addresses the representation of orders and categories.    In social contexts, how do we create a comprehensive picture of our social group or network, how do we perceive ourselves in the context of other people? How do we use analog dimensions, such as the up vs. down  dimension, or spatial distance, to represent differences in social status, or  friendship and affiliation relationships? I am also interested in cognitive fluency phenomena and implicit verb causality.  Recently, I have been interested in the fundamental cognitive elements of causality. 

Teaching summary

I am currently teaching undergraduate and postgraduate modules in Introduction to Psychology and decision making, alongside supervising postgraduate projects. I have also taught undergraduate statistics, social psychological theory, emotion, and selected topics in Social Cognition.

Publication

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Articles

Book sections

Books

Research

Research topics and related papers

Do spatial biases indicate our concepts of order?

The spatial agency effect (Maas et al., 2009) shows that Western people have a tendency to associate the left side with agentic behaviours and traits. There are many examples in the history of art and paintings, and from psychological experiments, to support this bias.  Recently, we (von Hecker et al., 2016) have suggested a more general mechanism that explains this bias and locates it as a special case within a more general explanation about how we represent order relations via mental models. In this project, students might explore these questions by asking whether such spatial effects will also obtain when people are not explicitly asked to put things in an order, but to spontaneously imagine scenes containing elements (or protagonists) that have different power / status / agency – related attributes. 

Maas, A., Suitner, C., Favaretto, X., & Cignacchi, M. (2009). Groups in space: Stereotypes and the spatial agency bias Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45, 496–504. 

Von Hecker U., & Klauer, K. C, Wolf, L., & Fazilat-Pour, M. (2016). Spatial processes in linear ordering. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition,

42, 1003-1033.

 

Bigger Is Better? Investigating Cognitive Bias Toward Magnitude

Do people naturally privilege “bigger” over “smaller”?

Across many domains — size, money, probability, social status — humans may show a systematic bias toward larger magnitudes. Recent research suggests that when describing differences, people disproportionately use “larger” terms (e.g., more, higher, bigger) even when “smaller” alternatives are logically equivalent. This project will investigate whether this reflects a broader cognitive bias toward magnitude. Possible questions include:

Do people evaluate larger objects more positively? Does linguistic framing (“more” vs “less”) influence choice? Are larger magnitudes more cognitively accessible? Are individual differences linked to magnitude bias?  Does spatial layout influence magnitude language? We design and run behavioural experiments (online or lab-based), analyse quantitative data, and contribute to ongoing debates in cognitive psychology about language, magnitude representation, and decision-making. 

Matthews, W. J., & Dylman, A. S. (2014). The language of magnitude comparison. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(2), 510.

 

11  Space and coherence

When solving a spatial task, people might see concepts as more closely together if the scenario in which the concepts occur “makes sense”. The general hypothesis to be examined in this project is that space is used in cognition as a metaphor of coherence. This basic idea may be fleshed out in different ways, for example, using causality (two cognitions stand in cause - effect relation, as opposed to being unrelated to each other), syllogistic reasoning, or cognitive balance.  The main aim of the project will be to study the applicability of spatial processing to the understanding of reasoning in terms of coherence and the construction of consistent mental models, and to conduct at least one empirical study in order to reveal some of the pertinent spatial effects. Another aim is to link these ideas to issues in the Organisational domain, or other applied domains, for example, with respect to the perception of more or less coherent communication structures, or status hierarchies, e.g., in organisations or friendship circles. 

Thagard, P. (1989). Explanatory coherence. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12, 435-502.

 

1   Cognitive Fluency

One consequence of processing a piece of information that is congruent with a cognitive schema may be that we experience a feeling of “easy going” or “fluency” while processing, as compared with a piece of information that is incongruent.  Such congruence/incongruence may occur in relation to social schemas (e.g., group stereotypes, typical social situations, etc.) or basically non-social schemas (about objects or abstract concepts like order, movement etc.).  The questions we ask in this project is about psychological downstream-effects of such “fluency” or “dysfluency” experiences.  Extant evidence suggests that we may transform a fluency experience into better liking of the person, object, or concept involved.  But aside from affective consequences, it may also be that certain cognitive consequences might occur, having to do with a resulting better memory for “fluent” materials compared to “dysfluent” ones, or certain misattributions from fluency onto familiarity. 

Winkielman, P., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2001). Mind at ease puts a smile on the face: psychophysiological evidence that processing facilitation elicits positive affect. Journal of personality and social psychology, 81(6), 989.

 

Research group

Yuhao He (PhD student)

Research collaborators

Geoffrey   Haddock (Psychology, Cardiff University)
Simon Dymond (Psychology, Swansea   University)
Ana   Guinote (Psychology, University College London)
Elanor   Hinton (Psychology, University of Bristol)
Michael   Conway (Psychology, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada)
Karl   Christoph Klauer (Psychology, University of Freiburg, Germany)
Marcin Bukowski (Psychology, Jagiellonian   University, Krakow, Poland)
Izabela   Kreijtz (Psychology, Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities,   Poland)
Grzegorz   Sedek (Psychology, Interdisciplinary Center for Applied Cognitive Studies, ICACS, Warsaw,   Poland)
Caterina Suitner (University of Padova, Italy)
Piotr Winkielman (University of California at San Diego, USA)
Paul Hanel (University of Bath, UK)
Sindhuja Sankaran (University of Krakow, Poland)
Malgosia Kossowska (University of Krakow, Poland)
André Assfalg (University of Freiburg, Germany)
Caterina Suitner (University of Padova, Italy)
Piotr Winkielman (University of California at San Diego,  USA)
Paul Hanel (University of Bath, UK)
Sindhuja Sankaran (University of Krakow, Poland)
Malgosia Kossowska (University of Krakow, Poland)

Ruoguang Si (Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Shanghai, China)

 

Teaching

I teach postgraduate introduction to Psychology, and the same in terms of year 1 for undergraduate students. I also teach decision making year 3 to undergraduate students.  I also supervise PhD students. 

Biography

Undergraduate education

1986: Diploma in Psychology, University of Hamburg

Postgraduate education

1992: Ph.D., Psychology, Free University Berlin
1999: Habilitation, Free University Berlin

Employment

2017 -- present: Reader at the School of Psychology, Cardiff University. 

2010 -- 2017: Senior Lecturer at the School of Psychology, Cardiff University.

2000 (September) to 2009: Lecturer at the School of Psychology, Cardiff   University.

1996 (August) – 2000 (August): Lecturer at the Institute of Psychology, University of Potsdam,   Department of Social Psychology

1994 (February) - 1996 (July): Lecturer at the Institute of Psychology, Free   University Berlin

1993 (August) -1994 (January): Scholarship at the University of Kansas,   USA

1988 - 1993: Lecturer at the Institute of Psychology, Free University Berlin,   Department of Social Psychology

1986 - 1988: Lecturership, funded by Research Project Attitudes and Behavior, Department of Social Psychology,   University of Hamburg

Honours and awards

Awards/external committees

2010-2012: Nomination and empanelment for ESRC Peer Review   College.
2009-2011: Empanelment as Research Guide at the Centre for Research   of Christ University, Bangalore, India.

Supervisions

Postgraduate research interests

My current interests are in social cognition and in general psychology.

If you are interested in applying for a PhD, or for further information  regarding my postgraduate research, please contact me directly (contact details available on the 'Overview' page), or submit a formal application.

Current students

Yuhao He (2nd year): Experiences and antecedents of causality. 

Current supervision

Yuhao He

Yuhao He

Past projects

Joseph Newton:  Ostracism and decision making.

Natalia Zarzeczna:  Space as a mental toolbox in the representation of meaning.

Jin, Z, Zixi: The “good is up”, metaphoric effects on recognition.

Wolf, Lukas: Affective and cognitive orientations in intergroup perception.

Sankaran, Sindhuja:  Reasoning in athletic performance: Facilitating or inhibing influences?

Masoud Fazilat Pour: Defocused mode of attention in depression?

Contact Details

Email [email protected]
Telephone +44 29208 76639
Campuses Tower Building, 70 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3AT

Research themes

Specialisms

  • Experimental psychology