Past events

Past iBBA-days

• iBBA day 2023 ‘Science communication’.
  A variety of modes of presentation to provoke a lively discussion with speakers like Frank Kuppert, Erik Scherder, Lennart de Groot en Mark van Vugt. Read more >
• iBBA day 2022 ‘Science to business’
  A great opportunity to learn about different approaches, different careers within and outside academia, and how to accomplish your goals. Read more >

Past Colloquia

• 2023 Sepember 21
  Lisa DeBruine visited iBBA for two days in September.
  On the first day, many early-career researchers from iBBA attended her workshop on data simulation and power analysis in R.
  On the second day, she gave a colloquium sharing her recent efforts to improve face research using team science (“Replicability and Generalisability in Face Research”). These efforts included already-finished research replicating findings from Western populations across dozens of countries and compiling a standardized database of faces across diverse populations. Finally, she demonstrated how data aggregation - a practice common not only in face research but in much of psychology - can drastically inflate Type I errors, and she proposed approaches to improve the field's statistical inferences.
• 2023 October 19
  Dr. Isabel Thielmann, head of the Independent Research Group “Personality, Identity, and Crime” at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law in Freiburg, Germany, visited Amsterdam Cooperation Lab and gave an interesting talk on moral self-to the iBBA community. Dr. Thielmann showed via research using behavioral decision-making tasks that although people have a natural desire to be honest (morally appropriate) in general, sometimes they compromise lying to serve their (financial) self-interest. Nevertheless, people manage to act dishonestly but still feel moral. Variations also exist on the individual level: Minimal people are brazen and always lie, and quite a proportion of people are consistently honest (40%). Interestingly, the corruptible (i.e., more likely to lie as the incentive size increases) and small sinners (i.e., lie only when the incentive size is small, potentially being more justifiable) add up to more than 50%. She also introduced some ongoing work on the implications for personality change to encourage people to become more moral in the long run. The talk was not only fascinating, but also inspiring and thought-provoking for the audience.
• 2023 June 8 
  Jennifer Cook, professor of Psychology at the University of Birmingham presented her work on reading other people. This included facial expression, movement and movement speed. The idea she represented was that when sad or depressed, movement is slower; when happy, movement is faster. Many experiments to show this were presented, with dots representing faces and bodies. 
  Dr Cook and her colleagues have shown that autistic adults move with subtly different kinematics compared to typical controls, and that such atypical kinematics can impact on the perception of others’ actions.  This might underlie the difficulties in social cognition: cues of others are difficult to interpret, when they do not match your way of expression. Dr. Cook’s presentation was inspiring, thought provoking, and resulted in a lively discussion.
• 2023 May 25 
  Tamar Makin, professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the MRC Cognition and Brain Unit at the University of Cambridge offered a captivating exploration of multiple topics in the field of neurorehabilitation and prosthetics. Makin's presentation highlighted the remarkable plasticity of the human brain, emphasizing how individuals can adapt to incorporating a prosthetic limb into their body schema. Her research shed light on the unique challenges faced by congenital and later life amputees, and the neural adaptations that occur in each group. Additionally, the discussion on integrating a second thumb through prosthetic means opened up exciting possibilities for expanding our understanding of the brain's ability to control multiple artificial limbs.  
  The colloquium also delved into the question of whether biomimetic control is important in prosthetic devices.
• 2023 March 16 
  Willem Frankenhuis, Associate Professor of Psychology at Utrecht University, and a Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Crime, Security and Law in Freiburg, Germany, visited us. His visit started with a lunch with early career researchers, where they talked with dr. Frankenhuis about his work at both institutes but also discussed ideas on the effects of the Ukrainian war on the development of children. It was a great opportunity to discuss work and ideas in an informal setting! 
  The colloquium talk discussed developmental adaptations to stressful conditions in children, ‘hidden talents’. He started with an example on genetic variation to the environment in bugs and ended with experimental data on youth exposed to violence and poverty. The data showed that these children scored on average lower than their peers on working memory updating when abstract stimuli were used, but not when real-world stimuli, such as school busses or pictures of money were presented.
  He argued that this work illustrates that cognitive development in adverse conditions may also include development of strengths and strategies, and not merely impairments.  
  The talk nicely integrated various fields of research ranging from evolutionary psychology to cognitive psychology and was a good example of an interdisciplinary approach to science.
• 2022 Nov 10
  The first live colloquium was a very interesting talk by dr. Patricia Lockwood from Birmingham, entitled “Prosocial motivation, learning, and preferences: age-related changes and neural mechanisms”. The topic touched upon the interest of many iBBA members. After the presentation there were drinks and opportunity to speak with the presenter. The following day, a lunch meeting with PhD students, and individual meeting sessions were organized, where they could ask dr. Lockwood specific, personal questions and discuss their work with her. It was “sold out”, as all 10 places for PhD students were occupied.