Research in the last decade has shown that emotion has a profound impact on perception. Such effects of emotion on perception may allow organisms to respond adaptively to motivationally relevant stimuli in the environment. Recently, we (Bocanegra & Zeelenberg, 2009) we have shown for the first time that emotion not only improves but also impairs early vision, suggesting that emotion causes a trade-off in perception rather than a general enhancement. The proposed project aims to investigate the mechanisms underlying emotional modulations in vision, in order to explain their functional significance.

This project investigates how employees can increase their own health behaviors (increase physical activity, reduce sitting) and, indirectly, their well-being and performance, while working from home during the corona crisis. We propose that individuals may develop self-initiated nudges that facilitate their daily choice to be physically active. We evaluate the effect of a 4-week self-nudging intervention in which employees learn to develop their own nudges (vs. health information and no information control group) on physical activity, well-being, and work performance.

The teenage years are turbulent, during which the brain undergoes a huge transformation, and youth experiment with opposing authority in a healthy way. However, serious antisocial behavior among adolescents, such as violence and weapon use, is increasing, posing a threat to our society. In this innovative project, efficiency of neural communication in the brain is studied and whether this efficiency in communication is predictive of youth antisocial behavior. Better understanding of risk factors in the brain as mechanisms of change for antisocial behavior is key, and contributes to better prevention, and the development of interventions against these behaviors in youth.

The importance of technology in our life is growing rapidly. Its impact on education, however, remains limited because of a lack of tuning with pedagogy. This proposal aims at increasing the pedagogical value of technology, by studying the effectiveness of videoblogging (vlogging) in science education. Whereas vlogging has proven itself as an increasingly popular form of entertainment among adolescents, a small but increasing number of studies shows that vlogging can provide a powerful means to enhance students’ learning and engagement in science education. It is, however, yet unknown what aspects of vlogging contribute to these benefits. Based on theories of learning, vlogging may be effective because it relies on proven learning strategies, such as explaining. It also allows the use of visual support, such as pictures, diagrams, or gestures, and thus fosters learning through multiple modalities and enables interaction between learner and learning materials. Additionally, vlogging may increase engagement and students interest in science by introducing more social activities. The proposed project will experimentally investigate how explaining, visual support, and social aspects contribute to learning and engagement during vlogging. It also investigates how innovative technologies, such as artificial intelligence and augmented reality, can support vlogging and enhance learning and engagement.

This research will investigate how people gather, interpret, and use information about COVID-19. Which information sources do they use? How often do they consult these sources? What is their factual knowledge about COVID-19? How confident are they about this knowledge? Do they endorse conspiracy theories about COVID-19? How closely do they follow governmental guidelines about COVID-19 related behavior? Are there systematic individual differences in these issues? Are there cross-cultural differences in COVID-19 information processing?