25 years of devotion to research
Psychologist and Social Neuroscientist
Tania has been actively involved in research for more than two decades by now. She started out as psychologist in the field of developmental and life-span psychology. After her PhD, she became a social neuroscientist and later added neuro- and behavioural economic approaches to her multi-disciplinary research program. Her focus is on the topic of human social behavior and social emotions such as empathy and compassion. She is not only interested in understanding the neuronal and hormonal basis of these social capacities, but also their malleability through mental training as well as their development during childhood.
How do we understand one another?
Foundations of Human Sociality
Her special interests are in the investigation of the mechanisms allowing humans to understand one another. How does our brain know what another person is feeling, thinking or intending to do? What are the neural bases for empathy, compassion and perspective taking? How can we improve our social skills and move into global cooperation? How does the social brain develop and what goes wrong with our social capacities in diverse pathologies such as autism, depression or narcissism? And how does training our social brain influence decision-making and social interactions?
Building Bridges between Disciplines
Fields of Expertise
In Tania’s scientific exploration, she builds bridges between fields that typically seldom interact, such as linking neuroscience with economics, science with arts or science with contemplative traditions from the East. The latter interest motivated her to develop the ReSource project, a large-scale mental training study on compassion.
Mental Health and Training during Covid-19 Pandemic
The CovSocial Project
The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching effects on the mental health and the daily social lives of many people throughout the globe. The CovSocial project aims, in a first phase, to shed light on these crucial pandemic-related changes in assessing longitudinally many markers of mental health, resilience and social cohesion in a large sample of Berliners throughout the many lock-downs in the yeas of 2020/21. In a second phase, we investigated whether we could reduce the increased loneliness and psychological vulnerability observed in Berliners by simple 10-weeks mindfulness-based or dyadic socio-affective online mental trainings.
A Trailer, Best-Of and Summary-Talk of the CovSocial findings featured by the recordings of our Symposium from December 2022 can be found here.
First descriptive findings on selected measures focusing on mental vulnerability, psychological resilience and social cohesion from phase1 can be downloaded here.
Combining Fields and Perspectives
A Multi-Disciplinary Approach
During her scientific career in different high-ranking research institutions across the globe, Tania has gathered expertise in many diverse fields ranging from cognitive, social and developmental psychology, through social neuroscience to micro- and macroeconomics. This broad education has allowed her to use a unique multi-disciplinary research approach in her understanding of the neuronal, hormonal and developmental mechanisms sub-serving human social intelligence and human sociality.
A Holistic Approach to Measuring Human Sociality
A Multi-Method Approach
To answer her interdisciplinary research questions, Tania uses a holistic multi-method approach in which she combines measurements from different disciplines. The main methods and markers that she uses are:
- Brain Imaging Methods (sMRI, fMRI, TMS, EEG)
- Autonomic Nervous System Measurements
- Bio- and Hormonal Markers (Cortisol, Oxytocin)
- Psychological Computer Tasks (Attention, Emotion Regulation, Social Cognition, Empathy, Compassion, Executive Functions)
- Trait and State Questionnaires (Personality and Health)
- Event Sampling Methods (Daily Mood, Behaviours, Sleep)
- Game Theoretical Paradigms (Pro-Social Behaviour and Cooperation)
- Virtual Reality Worlds (Complex Real-Life Behaviours)
Research Insights
Favourite Topics
- Neurobiology of Empathy and Compassion
- Loneliness, Social Cohesion and Cooperation
- Training of the Social Brain, Mindfulness, Compassion
- Narcissism, Autism, Depression
- Resilience and Stress Reduction
- Caring Economics and Economic Decision-Making