PhD Position: Computational Cognitive Neuroscience of Social Decision-Making at the Donders Centre for Cognition

How do people make decisions in their social environment? How do they learn the implicit rules of a social group? Are moral decisions different from other decisions? Can people shift their moral boundaries easily? How are these decisions computed in our brains? If you are interested in solid, quantitative answers to these questions, we might be looking for you.

The Donders Centre for Cognition is seeking a talented PhD candidate to work on a new research line into moral decision-making. The project aims to develop a Bayesian computational model of moral decision-making to test various hypotheses about the interactions between morality and other factors in social decision-making using behavioural and neuroimaging techniques. You will be part of the Systems Approach to Maladaptive Behaviour and Antisociality (SAMBA) group headed by Inti Brazil and the Cognitive Neuroecology Lab headed by Rogier Mars. The project is funded by the NWO grant ‘Morality as a hyperparameter in decision making: A new approach to studying an age-old problem’. The project will benefit from ongoing collaborations with the University of Oxford (Rogier Mars), the University of Cambridge (Francesco Poli), the Dutch Institute for Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology (Maaike Kempes), and the University of Copenhagen (James Blair).

You will be working in a multidisciplinary research group to develop new experimental paradigms and computational models to study the behavioural and neural basis of moral decision-making.
You will be responsible for developing and piloting the experimental task, acquiring and analysing behavioural and neuroimaging data, and reporting the data at conferences and peer-reviewed publications. You will interact with other researchers and collect data from adult participants.
You will develop a computational model of moral decision-making, based on existing models in the lab. You will work in conjunction with other researchers in the lab and through international collaboration. Furthermore you will contribute to academic life in the department, including taking on junior roles in administration, support jobs and teaching.

Would you like to learn more about what it’s like to pursue a PhD at Radboud University? Visit the page about working as a PhD candidate.

• We will give you a temporary employment contract (1.0 FTE) of 1.5 years, after which your performance will be evaluated. If the evaluation is positive, your contract will be extended by 2.5 years (4-year contract).
• You will receive a starting salary of €2,901 gross per month based on a 38-hour working week, which will increase to €3,707 in the fourth year (salary scale P).
• You will receive an 8% holiday allowance and an 8,3% end-of-year bonus.
• We offer Dual Career Coaching. The Dual Career Coaching assists your partner via support, tools, and resources to improve their chances of independently finding employment in the Netherlands.
• You will receive extra days off. With full-time employment, you can choose between 30 or 41 days of annual leave instead of the statutory 20.

Work and science require good employment practices. This is reflected in Radboud University's primary and secondary employment conditions. You can make arrangements for the best possible work-life balance with flexible working hours, various leave arrangements and working from home. You are also able to compose part of your employment conditions yourself, for example, exchange income for extra leave days and receive a reimbursement for your sports subscription. And of course, we offer a good pension plan. You are given plenty of room and responsibility to develop your talents and realise your ambitions. Therefore, we provide various training and development schemes.

The Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour is a world-class interfaculty research centre that houses more than 700 researchers devoted to understanding the mechanistic underpinnings of the human mind. Research at the Donders Institute is focused around four themes: 1. Language and communication, 2. Perception, action and control, 3. Plasticity and memory, 4. Neural computation and neurotechnology. Excellent, state-of-the-art research facilities are available for the broad range of neuroscience research that is being conducted at the Donders Institute. The Donders Institute has been assessed by an international evaluation committee as ‘excellent’ and recognised as a ‘very stimulating environment for top researchers, as well as for young talent’. The Donders Institute fosters a collaborative, multidisciplinary, supportive research environment with a diverse international staff. English is the lingua franca at the Institute.