Jakob Kaiser

We can only change what we can control. But how do people know when they are “in control”?

Using a video-game-like task, we studied how emotions and personality shape control experience.

Relevant for HCI and human-centered design that aims to support user autonomy.
doi.org/10.1016/j.co... 🤖🧪

NIM Insights Lunch: New Technology Climate Mi, 10. Dezember 2025

Politicians and business leaders often praise new technologies as engines of growth.
But how does the wider public really feel about these changes?

We surveyed 25,000 people across 25 countries.
I’ll share key results from this truly global study next week.
Join us: pretix.eu/nim/newtechn... 🧪

Ventromedial prefrontal cortex shields value computations from bodily arousal in decision making Emotional reactions to norm violations influence how people trade-off selfish interests against social norms, but it remains unknown which brain regions causally contribute to integrating physiologica...

New preprint: When making financial decisions, we often have to balance our self-interest with our sense of fairness. Using brain stimulation and physiological measures, this study shows how brain–body interactions shape our economic choices. Glad to be part of this project! doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Off to Duisburg for #MediaPsych2025

Thursday: I am chairing a session on attitudes towards AI

Friday: I am presenting our project on how genAI is changing the way people search for information online.

If you are in Duisburg and want to exchange ideas, get in touch!

www.uni-due.de/media-psych-...

Partner familiarity enhances performance in a manual precision task - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Partner familiarity enhances performance in a manual precision task

New paper out! Robots shouldn’t just work alongside humans — they should adapt to us. At TU Wien, we studied how people coordinate in real time during teamwork. Understanding natural human behaviour is key to building robots that truly align with our needs.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Could AI slow science? Confronting the production-progress paradox

Fascinating article on research productivity vs. innovation in the AI era. The danger: If used without critical thinking, AI might lead to a vast increase in research publications, while actual scientific progress stagnates. Quality over quantity matters! www.aisnakeoil.com/p/could-ai-s... 🧪

Our second contribution: a multi-country survey (25 nations) on public attitudes toward new technologies like AI.
We analyze what drives people's trust or fear regarding technological change in private life and society at large.
Lots of interesting insights => we will share full results soon!🧵(3/3)

In our lab study, participants played a dynamic video game task with varying levels of artificial interference.
We examined how subtle changes in control dynamics affect people's sense of autonomy.
Our findings highlight the importance of perceived autonomy in interactive system design.
🧵(2/3)

panorama view of Grenoble mountain and river

At last week's #CERE2025 in beautiful Grenoble, we had the chance to present two exciting research projects:
🧠 a lab study on agency in digital systems
🌍 a global survey on how citizens really feel about new technologies like AI
🧵(1/3)

Global Perspectives on New Technologies: A Large-Scale International Study on the Influence of Economics and Personal Values on Attitudes Towards Technological Change To succeed in the modern world, adapting to technological change in our professional and private life is vital. However, individual attitudes toward new technologies vary widely, ranging from optimism...

At HCI 2025 in Gothenburg, we gave a first sneak peek into our large-scale international study on how citizens across the globe perceive emerging technologies like AI. More detailed results from additional countries coming soon!

Read the preview: link.springer.com/chapter/10.1... 🧪

We’re thrilled to have been awarded the UMAP Best LBR Paper Award for our work on simulating public polling with generative AI! Read our winning article here: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/... 🧪

Thank you 🙂

🎉 Congrats to our PhD student @marengiersiepen.bsky.social for winning this year's Young Scientist Award for her work on how self-determined choice boosts learning in the brain—an important insight in the age of AI-supported decisions!
Check out our winning article here: doi.org/10.1093/cerc... 🧪

A New Era of Online Search? A Large-Scale Study of User Behavior and Personal Preferences during Practical Search Tasks with Generative AI versus Traditional Search Engines | Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.

How does generative AI change the way people interact with the internet? Check out our new CHI paper: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/... 🧪

entrance of CHI conference in Yokohama

Jakob Kaiser presenting research at CHI2025

My main takeaway from #CHI2025 in Japan: advancing AI’s usefulness isn’t just about bigger models — it’s about smarter, more intuitive approaches for people to interact with them. Great to see so many research projects there pushing in that direction! 🤖 🧪

Our research was accepted to #CHI2025 in Japan, one of the leading human-computer interaction conferences. We explore how generative AI is transforming online search. Could ChatGPT replace Google? And what does that mean for websites relying on user traffic?
programs.sigchi.org/chi/2025/pro...

At this year’s #teap2025, we will be presenting one talk and two posters on the psychology of human autonomy and why it is vital for successful human-AI interactions. Join me on Monday at the human-machine-interactions session, where I’ll discuss how AI decision support influences human cognition. 🧪

research poster of our Active Self project

Our latest contribution to the DFG Active Self research initiative: To act effectively, both humans and robots need to gauge how much control they have over the environment. Using a video game-like task, we investigate what shapes human control perception in challenging tasks. Publication in prep 🧪

If you are curious about artificial intelligence and machine learning, but don’t know where to start, I recommend checking out the Neuromatch program! From my own experience, these courses are fun and provide a nice hands-on overview of common machine learning techniques. 🧠💡 neuromatch.io

Jakob Kaiser at the symposium

Thanks to all participants of our symposium on how self-determination shapes human well-being and behaviour! We had some insightful discussions. As AI becomes more present in our lives, we need to explore ways to design these systems to enhance, not diminish, our sense of control and autonomy.🧪

2024 Annual Meeting Program - Society for Psychophysiological Research

Excited to present our latest research on how freedom of choice impacts learning and decision-making at the Society for Psychophysiological Research Meeting 2024 in Prague tomorrow! If you're attending, join our symposium on "Agency in Action": sprweb.org/page/2024_pr... 🧪

One hundred years of EEG for brain and behaviour research - Nature Human Behaviour On the centenary of the first human EEG recording, more than 500 experts reflect on the impact that this discovery has had on our understanding of the brain and behaviour. We document their priorities...

100 years ago, EEG was invented to measure human brain activity. 🧠⚡️ To celebrate, a group of experts has tried to predict how this technology might shape research and society over the next century. I'm thrilled to be included in this exciting effort! Check out the results: doi.org/10.1038/s415... 🧪

My choice, my actions: self-determination, not instrumental value of outcomes enhances outcome monitoring during learning Abstract. Freedom of choice enhances our sense of agency. During goal-directed behavior, the freedom to choose between different response options increases

NEW STUDY by @marengiersiepen.bsky.social: Discover how freedom of choice influences your brain! Our new study shows that self-determined decisions enhance neural feedback responses, suggesting that our sense of control plays a crucial role in learning.📖 doi.org/10.1093/cerc... 🧪

When we freely choose what to do, instead of being told what to do, our brain becomes more receptive to the feedback we receive for our actions. This increased brain activity helps us form new memories faster. It may explain why active, self-directed learning is more effective than passive learning.

Conference poster describing our recent experiment.

Our contribution to the recent FENS 2024 (2/2): Flexible behavior across various situations is driven by a common neural mechanism that helps to update cognitive processing to align with our current goals. ( Paper in preparation) 🧠🧪

Research Poster describing our recent experiments.

Our contribution to the recent FENS 2024 (1/2): Freedom of choice enhances the brain's ability to learn new information by boosting neural feedback processing. (Publication in press) 🧠🧪

In-Mind The Inquisitive Mind, or In-Mind, is In-Mind Foundation's flagship online quarterly magazine for social psychology. We publish a peer-reviewed magazine, and we'd like to think that our journal is the ...

I've recently joined @in-mindmagazine.bsky.social. It's a fantastic initiative by scientists to share new insights from psychological research with the public. Check it out:
www.in-mind.org 🧪

As Europe crowns its football champion at the Euro’s & with the Paris Olympics on the horizon, we're thrilled to announce our special issue on sport psychology "Olympic Mind“ www.in-mind.org/issue/06-2024

We will present two of our projects at the next FENS conference. We investigate the neural basis of 1) sense of agency and 2) human flexibility. Check out the abstracts below + meet us in Vienna! #FENS2024
fens2024.abstractserver.com/program/#/de...
fens2024.abstractserver.com/program/#/de... 🧪

This is at the same time scary and amazingly beautiful.