Masterarbeiten

Beschreibung: What factors influence the attribution of inculpating mental states, such as intention, foresight, negligence, as well as legal culpability? Do some such factors - e.g. the character of the defendant, or the severity of outcome - constitute biases? Are legal experts susceptible to such biases? How can legal trials be improved so as to guard against the distorting influence of bias?

The goal of this master thesis is to explore one factor potentially biasing the attribution of inculpating states of mind as well as culpability and/or to investigate strategies of mitigating the effect so as to make legal trials more just.

Reading suggestions

Kneer, M. (2022). Reasonableness on the Clapham Omnibus: Exploring the outcome-sensitive folk concept of reasonable. In Judicial decision-making: Integrating empirical and theoretical perspectives (pp. 25-48). Springer International Publishing.

Kneer, M., & Machery, E. (2019). No luck for moral luck. Cognition, 182, 331-348.

Kneer, M., & Bourgeois-Gironde, S. (2017). Mens rea ascription, expertise and outcome effects: Professional judges surveyed. Cognition, 169, 139-146.

Kontakt: Prof. Dr. Markus Kneer, E-Mail

Beschreibung: How do people view artificially intelligent agents from a moral perspective? Do they consider them capable of having bad intentions? Are they deemed morally responsible? How does the moral evaluation of human agents change if they collaborate with AI? Are there situations in which artificial agents should act differently than human agents? If so, why?

The goal of this master thesis is to make some progress on one or several of the above or related questions, so as to improve our understanding of moral judgment in human-AI interaction.

Reading suggestions

Kneer, M., & Viehoff, J. (2025). The Hard Problem of AI Alignment: Value Forks in Moral Judgment. In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (pp. 2671-2681).

Kneer, M., & Christen, M. (2024). Responsibility gaps and retributive dispositions: Evidence from the US, Japan and Germany. Science and Engineering Ethics, 30(6), 51.

Stuart, M. T., & Kneer, M. (2021). Guilty artificial minds: Folk attributions of mens rea and culpability to artificially intelligent agents. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 5(CSCW2), 1-27.

Kneer, M. (2021). Can a robot lie? Exploring the folk concept of lying as applied to artificial agents. Cognitive Science, 45(10), e13032.


Kontakt: Prof. Dr. Markus Kneer, E-Mail

Beschreibung: In dieser Masterarbeit soll mit der Methode einer experimentellen Befragung der Konflikt zwischen Wolfsbetroffenen und Wolfsschützern in der Schweiz untersucht werden. Zentraler Bestandteil der Arbeit ist eine Zusammenstellung der aktuellen Literatur zum Thema und die Ableitung von Vorschlägen zur Konfliiktlösung bzw. Versöhnung. Die Arbeit wird im Rahmen einer Praxiskooperation angefertigt.

Kontakt: Johannes Ullrich, E-Mail

Beschreibung: Many persistent social problems (environment, poverty, technological ethics etc.) are complex and ill-defined, requiring creative solutions that are both novel and useful. While the psychological studies of idea generation have been widely examined, less is known about the idea generation in the context of social issues. This thesis project will explore how individuals generate solutions to social problems in local and global contexts. It will test how psychological characteristics (e.g., multiple social identities, membership in disadvantaged groups, perceived psychological distance) predict idea generation and engagement with social challenges. Students can tailor the project to their own theoretical interests (social identity, multicultural experience, construal-level theory, interdependence, and more.) by incorporating their hypotheses. The implications of this research are expected to offer valuable contributions to the field of social innovation.

Reading Examples:
Steffens, N. K., Goc?owska, M. A., Cruwys, T., & Galinsky, A. D. (2016). How multiple social identities are related to creativity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42(2), 188?203.
Leung, A. K. Y., Maddux, W. W., Galinsky, A. D., & Chiu, C. Y. (2008). Multicultural experience enhances creativity: The when and how. American Psychologist, 63(3), 169?181.
Amabile, T. M. (1983). The social psychology of creativity: A componential conceptualization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(2), 357?376.
Hardy, J. H., III, Ness, A. M., & Mecca, J. (2017). Outside the box: Epistemic curiosity as a predictor of creative problem solving and creative performance. Personality and Individual Differences, 104, 230?237.
Lopez-Persem, A., Moreno-Rodriguez, S., Ovando-Tellez, M., Bieth, T., Guiet, S., Volle, E., & Barbot, B. (2023). How subjective idea valuation energizes and guides creative idea generation. American Psychologist
Kontakt: M. Onur Yasa, E-Mail