We invite applications for a postdoctoral research position as part of the ERC Advanced Grant project “Shifting Mindsets for Sustainable Consumption (SUSCON),” funded by the European Union and led by Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Hofmann. The position is located at the Department of Social and Environmental Psychology at the Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum. For more information on our research, please visit https://www.soc.psy.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/ Ruhr University Bochum is one of Germany’s leading research universities, offering a collaborative and interdisciplinary research environment on a unified, modern campus. Unsustainable consumption is a key driver of the climate crisis and must be urgently addressed to stay within planetary boundaries. Despite widespread awareness, personal lifestyle changes have proven insufficient and difficult. Rather than relying on individual self-control alone, major structural policy solutions addressing the systemic roots of the social dilemma of unsustainable consumption are needed. Thus, citizens, as well as policymakers, need to become more aware of the significant constraints to sustainable lifestyles and to support and actively promote such policy solutions. This very process is often psychologically hindered by an overemphasis on personal responsibility and an underestimation of the structural forces shaping sustainable behavior. The SUSCON project aims to expose such limitations and the potential of a “structural mindset” that better recognizes systemic drivers of behavior and supports collective, structural solutions. Drawing on experimental psychology, behavioral economics, political psychology, and AI-based discourse analysis, SUSCON will examine how different mindsets affect cooperation, policy support, and attribution of responsibility in both citizens and policymakers.
The postdoctoral researcher will contribute centrally to the conceptual, methodological, and analytical design of several studies in SUSCON. A key responsibility is leading WP3.1, a large-scale cross-national survey study examining how individual-level and country-level factors shape citizens’ support for structural versus individual-level sustainability policies across multiple EU member states. The position additionally involves contributions to work packages examining policy decision-making among policymakers and everyday sustainability choices.
