Johanna Falk

Current position

I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Motivation, Brain & Behavior Lab at the Paris Brain Institute (ICM), under the supervision of Mathias Pessiglione. My current research is supported by a two-year Postdoc.Mobility fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Project

Research on value-based decision-making has traditionally focused on situations where individuals choose between a limited set of simultaneously presented options, typically two items displayed on a screen. In everyday life, however, options rarely appear all at once. Instead, people discover them one by one through sequential exploration within a vast option space. In such open environments, individuals must decide not only what to choose, but also when to stop exploring and commit to an option. My project investigates the mechanisms that guide exploration and commitment: specifically, how and when individuals decide to make a final choice when the likeability of unexplored alternatives is unknown and the number of possible options is seemingly unlimited.

Background

I completed my PhD in Psychology at the University of Geneva in 2023 under the supervision of Guido Gendolla, with visiting stays at New York University and Radboud University. Prior to that, I obtained a Master of Science in Psychology from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf in 2019 and a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from University of Luxembourg in 2017. Over the past ten years, I have consistently worked in research laboratories, on topics such as motivation, decision-making, affect, effort, and health psychology.

Contact

johanna.falk@icm-institute.org