Head: Professor Dr. Cornelia Wrzus
The section Psychological Aging Research is part of both the Psychological Institute and the Network Aging Research.
The focus of our section is on person and environment related aspects of lifelong development. We are interested in normative and differential patterns of development in social relationships, emotional processes, personality traits and life environments in adulthood.Â
Our projects investigate topics such as changes in emotional processes over the life span, personality development in younger and older adulthood, age differences in personal perception, short-term dynamics in affect, social interactions and behaviour, and interactions between social relationships and personality over the life course.Â
In the studies we work together with physiologists, medical doctors, computer scientists and economists, depending on the focus of the content. We use different methods (e.g. psychophysiological, implicit as well as self-reporting procedures) for laboratory and everyday investigations and use elaborate statistical methods for data evaluation (e.g. structural equation models, time series analyses, multinomial modelling).Â
In teaching , we offer basic and in-depth lectures, seminars and exercises on various topics of socio-emotional and cognitive development for the Bachelor and Master programmes in Psychology.