Verena Heidrich M.Sc.

I am a psychologist and hold an M.Sc. with focus on legal psychology. Since July 2022, I have been working as a research assistant on Project B01: “Cognitive Human Differentiation” at the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1482 “Studies in Human Categorisation” and as a doctoral student in the Department of Social and Legal Psychology at the Institute of Psychology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.

My research is primarily in the area of social cognition, with a focus on how people spontaneously sort their social world into categories and then make stereotypical assumptions based on these categories. In this context, I study questions such as: By what social dimensions do we cluster people around us in order to understand and predict our social environment? What contextual factors influence these sortings, making them situation-dependent? How do distinctions by multiple characteristics (e.g., age and gender) interact with each other? What role do our experiences and goals play in how we perceive differences?

In addition, I am interested in questions of legal psychology in the area of psychological credibility assessments.

What I appreciate most about working in the CRC is the interdisciplinary exchange, which encourages members to engage with other ways of thinking and methodological approaches as well as different research topics. This helps them to place their own research in the larger context.

Foto: Stephanie Füssenich