Thomas Schilling, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher
Phone.: +49 (0)651 201-1841
E-mail: thomas.schilling@uni-trier.de
Office: D 130
Office hours
As per request via email
Research areas
- Experimental social psychology/economics
- Personality psychology
- Judgment and decision-making
- Heuristics, biases, and fast-and-frugal decisions
- Digital nudging (dark patterns) on websites
- Human-computer-interaction
| Current courses - winter term 2023/24 |
|---|
| 11401126 - C2 Empiriepraktikum [English] – Mo, 14 - 15 (D 420), Tu, 16 - 18 (C9) |
| Courses summer term 2024 |
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11401133 - C3 Wissenschaftliche Projektarbeit [English] – Mo, 12 - 14 (D 031) and Th, 14 - 16 (D 034), course ends on 27 May 2024 |
| 11401043 - B3 Recherche und Datenanalyse [English] – Mo, 14 - 16 and Th, 12 - 14 (B 121), course ends on 23 May 2024 |
Academic Career
05/2022 – 12/2026 | Postdoctoral researcher at Trier University |
03/2018 – 02/2022 | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics at Victoria University of Wellington – Wellington, New Zealand |
10/2013 – 12/2015
| Master of Business Administration at Trier University – Trier, Germany
|
10/2009 – 12/2012 | Bachelor of Business Administration at University of Applied Sciences Trier – Trier, Germany
|
Professional Work Experience
since 09/2023 | Freelance behavioral scientist in Germany. Helping companies and government institutions to understand people’s financial decision-making, designing and testing experiments, analyzing experimental data. |
02/2020 – 10/2021 | Behavioral Scientist at Behavioural by Design Wellington, New Zealand |
01/2016 – 12/2016 | Business Analyst at Advanzia Bank S.A. Münsbach, Luxembourg |
03/2015 – 05/2015 | Financial Analyst Intern at University of Nebraska at Omaha Omaha, Nebraska, USA |
01/2014 – 07/2014 and | Project Management Intern UBS Luxembourg S.A. (Bank) Luxembourg, LU |
01/2013 – 09/2013 | Assistant Auditor at KPMG Luxembourg S.à r.l. (Auditor) Luxembourg, LU |
02/2012 – 07/2012 | Global Investment Solutions Intern at Deutsche Bank Luxembourg S.A. Luxembourg, LU |
02/2010 – 04/2010 | Financial Advisory Intern at MLP Finanzdienstleistungen AG (Financial Advisors) Trier, Germany |
Research Interests
I am broadly interested in how people make the decisions they make and what factors influence these decisions. Specifically, I am interested in financial decisions—from all decisions we make every day (e.g., shopping in stores, on the street, online) to decisions we make infrequently (e.g., purchases of durable goods, real-estate, and investments)
- Broadly: Psychology of money, personality psychology, experimental social psychology, economic psychology
- More specifically: Personality predictors of financial decisions (savings, borrowings, purchases, investments) and person-situation perspectives (interactions between context, situation, and people’s personality) in financial decision-making
Supervision of Students’ Theses
I am happy to supervise your thesis as long as it aligns with my own research areas and interests. Furthermore, if you do wish to work with me on a thesis, I have a few requirements that you need to be aware of. Please contact me regarding your thesis via email if you are okay with my requirements. We can then discuss your thesis.
My requirements are as follows:
- You are welcome to choose the exact topic yourself. But if you don't have a specific idea for a topic, I will suggest you a research topic broadly within the area of financial decisions done via mobile apps or the browser (e.g., consumer/purchasing behavior, savings behavior, debt behavior, investing in financial markets).
- The project must involve experimental manipulation.
- Personality variables (HEXACO+D) must be part of the data collection.
- Data should be collected online from a diversified sample of adults, preferably working adults.
- The thesis must contribute to scientific knowledge, so it must have the potential to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. That should be your ambition of work.
- If you do not wish to continue working on the thesis until publication, I would like to have your permission to continue working on the project as a (corresponding) co-author until I published or abandoned the paper.
- The thesis must be written in English.
- The data of the thesis must be analyzed with R using multivariate methods (multiple regressions, structural equation models).
Publications
2023
Thomas Dudek, Eberhard Feess, and Yuriy Timofeyev. Misreporting in teams with individual decision making: the impact of information and communication, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2023.03.027
2022
Thomas Dudek, Jan Feld, Anne A. Brenoe, and Julia Rohrer. 2022. Global Evidence on the Effect of Siblings’ Sex on Personality, Psychological Science.https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976221094630
Dudek, Thomas. 2022. Personality economics: An investigation of how personality develops and how it predicts decisions. Victoria University of Wellington Thesis Depository. Access here (link).
2020
Amin Zokaei Ashtiani, Thomas Dudek, and Marc-Oliver Rieger. 2020. Happy Savers and Happy Spenders: An experimental study comparing US Americans and Germans, Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2019.101506.
Working Papers
Thomas Schilling and Vishal George. Toward a regenerative future: Profiling and nudging pro-environmental leaders?
Thomas Schilling and Wiebke Bleidorn. 2023. Personality Differences Predict Insurance Decisions.
Thomas Dudek, Ilan Noy, and Eric Ulm. Demand for multi-year catastrophe insurance contracts: Experimental evidence for mitigating the insurance gap. CESifo Working Paper No. 9442.
Thomas Dudek, Wiebke Bleidorn and Eric Ulm. Locus of control predicts decisions involving risks.
Thomas Dudek, Eberhard Feess, and Roee Sarel. Do moral transgressions lead to pro-social effort? Evidence from a real-effort experiment.
