Everything around us is informed by science – from knowing what is safe to eat to staying connected via our smartphones, from knowing how to effectively slow down a pandemic to mitigating and adapting to the climate crisis. We live in such a highly specialized world that we need to rely on scientific experts, maybe even more often than we realize. Our lab is fascinated by how science permeates society and wants to understand how people’s psychology impacts their trust, attitudes, and behavior towards science.

We investigate how laypeople, but also researchers themselves perceive science: the people doing science, scientific evidence, and the scientific system as a whole. We want to find out what promotes or challenges trust in and within science and what different people think about science‘s role in society. Finally, we apply (social) psychological theorizing to understand why, when, and for whom science communication works – and why not.