How do individuals make decisions? What determines the quality of group decisions? When and why do people cooperate with others? How does intergroup competition evolve?

Simona Demková, Assistant professor at the Europa Institute of Leiden University, publishes her book ‘Automated Decision-Making and Effective Remedies: The New Dynamics in the Protection of EU Fundamental Rights in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice’.

This minor focuses on how our thoughts, emotions and behaviour are influenced by other people, and how we influence other people.

Health inequities, obesity among children, loneliness, performance stress among youngsters. What are the drivers behind such ‘wicked problems’ and how might they be related? This interdisciplinary minor offers you the possibility to work with societal partners to gain a deeper understanding of real-life…

How can teachers be motivated by their students’ data in making stepwise changes to their teaching practices?

In science, it is of vital importance that multiple studies corroborate the same result. Researchers therefore need to know all the details of previous experiments in order to implement the procedures as exactly as possible. However, this is becoming a major problem in neuroscience, as animal studies…

Efficiently responding to others’ emotions has great survival value, especially for social species, such as primates, who establish close, long-term bonds with group members. The closest living relatives to humans are the chimpanzee and the bonobo. Studying these species, and comparing them on the exact…

Our project focuses on the analysis of decision-making processes in the European Union (EU) and explores how approaches and tools to understand decision-making found in both the Natural and the Social Sciences can be linked, knowledge between these traditions exchanged and synergies utilized. To explore…

We present an extensive study of methods for exactly solving stochastic constraint (optimisation) problems (SCPs) in network analysis. These problems are prevalent in science, governance and industry.

The starting point for this research project is the notion that the human brain is susceptible to all kinds of fallacies and biases that affect our perceptions and influence our reasoning outside of our conscious awareness. Indeed, most people think they are merely observing facts and that they process…

PhD defence

Müller, Braun & Fraussen examine the conditions under which commissioners appear in the news and which communication strategies they pursue.

How do processes of coalition-formation influence patterns of decision-making in the European Union?

As a research project between four Jean Monnet Chairs - two located in Europe, one in Canada and one in the U.S. -- the project DEUBAL has been approved in 2010 for co-financing by the European Commission. DEUBAL aims to study changes in European decision-making due to the Lisbon Treaty, by a combination…

Nadine Raaphorst wrote an chapter for The Oxford Handbook of Administrative Justice about how two notions of fairness are studied in street-level bureaucracy literature and about the factors that influence how bureaucrats behave in this regard.

How do cognitive, motivational, and affective processes interact to select actions?

On 20 March 2019, Tim Dekkers defended his thesis 'Mobility, Control and Technology in Border Areas: Discretion and Decision-making in the Information Age'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. dr. J.P. van der Leun en Prof. dr. M.A.H. van der Woude.

Promotor: A.P.IJzerman Co-promotor: A. Bender

Big data promises to transform public decision-making for the better by making it more responsive to actual needs and policy effects. However, much recent work on big data in public decision-making assumes a rational view of decision-making, which has been much criticized in the public administration…

In this research note, Van der Does & Kantorowicz aruge that citizens that tend to experience political exclusion are often more supportive of direct and participatory forms of decision-making.

This dissertation looks into the role of discretion granted by EU directives (Article 288 Treaty on Functioning of the European Union) in legislative decision-making and national transposition processes of these directives.

On 20 & 21 April 2017 international researchers in the field of law and society and criminology presented their work in Brussels and shared ideas on discretion and decision-making.

Special Issue Workshop Res Publica

In this article, Marco Cinelli, assistant professor at Leiden University College The Hague, examines proper and improper uses of Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) methods in energy systems analysis.

In recent years, the question why citizens (do not) support democratic innovations has attracted increasing academic attention. In this research note, Van Der Does & Kantorowicz for the first time empirically verify what drives citizens’ instrumental considerations in their evaluation of a DI.

From 14 to 15 September 2023, Simona Demkova, AI researcher at the Europa Institute, participated in the INDIGO Project Final Conference, where she provided valuable perspectives on the implications of AI for European public law.

In the world of Ancient Greece the interpretation of supernatural signs was a versatile tool to facilitate decision-making. This is the central hypothesis of the PhD dissertation of historian Kim Beerden. Defence on 14 February.

PACES is an innovative, inter-disciplinary and multi-level research project that asks, How do changes in society, individual life experiences and migration policy shape decisions to stay or to migrate over time and across countries? And how can this knowledge inform future migration policies and gov…

The car we buy is made out of thousands of components, which are produced using different types of materials. These materials need to be sourced from different places, sent to production facilities and assembled. Once the car is dismissed, the components need to be taken care of by either reusing, recycling…

The coronacrisis is emerging as the ultimate test for political leaders. How do national political leaders get ahead or behind ‘the curve’ of fast-changing dynamics. Martin Lodge (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Arjen Boin (Leiden University Institute of Political Science) look…

Behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying risky decision-making in adolescents

PhD defence

To easily take part in group decision-making research, Jörg Gross, Assistent Professor Social and Organisational Psychology, launched a platform that allows students at the social interaction lab. Sign up to receive invitations if you are interested in taking part in on-going scientific studies in the…

A recent publication by Niek Strohmaier, Assistant Professor of Empirical Legal Studies (ELS) Lab @Leiden, together with Professor Jan Adriaanse, Professor Kees van den Bos and Associate Professor Helen Pluut, has been accepted by the Journal of Applied Social Psychology.