Mission Statement

We, the social psychology group at Philipps University Marburg, recognize...

that our world is characterized by serious social issues and injustices, including oppression and exploitation, exclusion, discrimination, violence, and environmental degradation;
that these social injustices cause serious harm and reduce the fulfillment of psychological needs and well-being of people;
that they are not primarily caused by individual behaviour, but often result from conflicts between social groups;
that we, as social psychologists striving for a more just and peaceful world, need to better understand their social and structural causes, and to develop strategies for prevention and intervention that go beyond changing individuals and build on the power of groups as agents of change.

Therefore, in our activities, we are guided by the following principles:

Interdisciplinary orientation: We consider collaborations between people with different disciplinary perspectives necessary to deal with complex social issues that cannot be dealt with comprehensively from a single disciplinary perspective.
Diversity, intersectionality, positionality: We encourage diversity of team members, students, and research participants; are mindful of various and interlocking power hierarchies; and critically reflect on our own social positionalities and their impact on our research and other activities.
Transparency & good scientific practices: We aim at ensuring that our scientific methods and results are comprehensible, accessible, reproducible, and available for critique.
Respectful Interactions: We value respectful and fair treatment of all members (inside and outside) of our working group and regularly reflect on our team dynamics.

We address our research questions by using methodologies which…

are context-sensitive and carefully selected depending on the phenomena studied and questions asked.
can be quantitative, qualitative or mixed; exploratory or confirmatory.
adopt open-science practices (such as pre-registration, open data).
can, where possible, be implemented using open source programs.
reflect the latest knowledge in the field of psychological methods.

For more information on our research focuses, please click here.

In our teaching and student supervision, we strive to…

familiarize students with the latest international knowledge in the field of social psychology;
foster critical thinking and awareness of assumptions and underlying worldviews in social psychology and psychological methods;
enable students to contribute to this knowledge, e.g. in discussions or own research projects;
encourage students, as scientists and citizens, to act responsibly and develop confidence to actively take a stand in light of social injustices;
engage students to self-reflect on their values and social positionality in society.

We engage in knowledge exchange with:

other researchers: We publish our research in scientific journals, present our work at conferences, and engage in networking activities such as research training groups and scientific organizations. We also aim to connect to other researchers through social media such as Twitter.
the broader public: We engage in roundtable discussions, write for science magazines or blogs, and give interviews in public media. We also aim to participate more in other formats such as using Twitter for the broader public, participate in science slams, or making podcasts.
institutions and policy-makers: We seek to cooperate with “agents of change” such as individuals in communities and (non-)governmental organizations and engage in advocacy by offering workshops or providing evidence-based policy recommendations