The Max Planck Research Group for Rationality Enhancement is looking for a Ph.D. student or postdoc to co-develop and evaluate cognitive prostheses for decision-support, productivity, goal achievement, and/or goal-setting.
At the beginning of this project, you will be working with a web-developer to create a to-do list gamification app for helping people overcome procrastination and achieve their goals. You will evaluate alternative versions of this cognitive prosthesis in field experiments. Later on in this project, you will develop additional cognitive prostheses for decision support and/or goal setting.
The successful applicant will most likely have a background in human-computer interaction, psychology, or cognitive science, experience with web development and behavioral experiments, and a keen interest in researching and enhancing human productivity. Familiarity with the reinforcement learning framework (Markov decision processes), heuristics and biases, field experiments, longitudinal studies, and computational models of decision-making would be a plus.
To apply for this position, please email your CV, selected publications or transcripts and your thesis/theses, and a cover letter describing your motivation and relevant skills and research experience to re-jobs@tuebingen.mpg.de and arrange for 2-3 reference letters to be sent to the same address.