Member of Perception and Action Lab
Helen Fischer joined the IWM in April 2022 as a postdoc in the Perception and Action lab. Her research comprises the role of metacognition, in particular one’s insight into the limits of own knowledge, for beliefs about politicized science such as climate change or COVID-19. She also investigates the importance of metacognition for detecting own biases such as motivated reasoning and for information spread in social networks.
Helen Fischer received her PhD in cognitive psychology from Heidelberg University in 2015. After completing postdoctoral research positions at the University of Heidelberg on public perception and understanding of climate change, she received a postdoctoral Fellowship from the German Resaerch Foundation (DFG). She worked at the Stockholm Reslience Centre, Stockholm, Sweden, from 2019 to 2020, and 2020-2022 she was a Guest Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Center for Adaptive Rationality, Berlin. In 2018, she was part of The Lancet Countdown on Climate Change and Health 2018, Media Coverage of Health and Climate Change.
Fischer, H., Huff., M., Anders, G., & Said, N. (in press). Metacognition, public health compliance and vaccination willingness Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences (PNAS).
Holford, D., Fasce, A., Tapper, K., Demko, M., Lewandowsky, S., Hahn, U., Abels, C. M., Al-Rawi, A., Alladin, S., Sonia Boender, T., Bruns, H., Fischer, H., Gilde, C., Hanel, P. H., Herzog, S. M., Kause, A., Lehmann, S., Nurse, M. S., Orr, C., Pescetelli, N., Petrescu, M., Sah, S., Schmid, P., Sirota, M., & Wulf, M. (in press). Science communication as a collective intelligence endeavor: A manifesto and examples for implementation. Science Communication. https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10755470231162634
Open Access
Fischer, H., Wijermans, N., & Schlüter, M. (2023). Testing the social function of metacognition for common‐pool resource use. Cognitive Science, 47(3), Article e13212. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13212
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van den Broek, K. L., Luomba, J., van den Broek, J., & Fischer, H. (2023). Content and complexity of stakeholders’ mental models of socio-ecological systems. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 85, Article 101906. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2022.101906
Open Access
Fischer, H., Huff, M., & Said, N. (2022). Polarized climate change beliefs: No evidence for science literacy driving motivated reasoning in a U.S. national study. American Psychologist, 77(7), 822-835. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/amp0000982 [Data]
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Fischer, H., & Said, N. (2021). Importance of domain-specific metacognition for explaining beliefs about politicized science: the case of climate change. Cognition, 208, Article 104545. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104545
Said, N.*, Fischer, H.*, & Anders, G. (2021). Contested science: Individuals with higher metacognitive insight into interpretation of evidence are less likely to polarize. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 29(2), 668-680. *Equal contribution. https://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13423-021-01993-y
Fischer, H., van den Broek, K. L., Ramisch, K., & Okan, Y. (2020). When IPCC graphs can foster or bias understanding: evidence among decision-makers from governmental and non-governmental institutions. Environmental Research Letters, 15(11), Article 114041. https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abbc3c
Open Access
Amelung, D.*, Fischer, H.*, Herrmann, A., Aall, C., Louis, V. R., Becher, H., Wilkinson, P., & Sauerborn, R. (2019). Human health as a motivator for climate change mitigation: results from four European high-income countries. Global Environmental Change, 57, Article 101918. *Equal contribution. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.05.002
Fischer, H., Amelung, D., & Said, N. (2019). The accuracy of German citizens’ confidence in their climate change knowledge. Nature Climate Change, 9(10), 776-780. https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0563-0
Watts, N., Amann, M., Arnell, N., Ayeb-Karlsson, S., Belesova, K., Berry, H., Bouley, T., Boykoff, M., Byass, P., Cai, W., Campbell-Lendrum, D., Chambers, J., Daly, M., Dasandi, N., Davies, M., Depoux, A., Dominguez-Salas, P., Drummond, P., ... Fischer, H., ... Costello, A. (2018). The 2018 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: shaping the health of nations for centuries to come. The Lancet, 392(10163), 2479-2514. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(18)32594-7
Fischer, H., & van den Broek, K. (2021). Climate change knowledge, meta-knowledge and beliefs. In A. Franzen & S. Mader (Eds.), Research Handbook on Environmental Sociology (pp. 116-132). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781800370456.00015
Fischer, H. (2023, Januar 24). Wissen, was man weiß und verrauschte Informationsumgebungen. Eingeladener Vortrag auf dem Forschungskolloquium des Departments für Wissenschaftskommunikation. KIT, Karlsruhe. [Vortrag]
Fischer, H. (2022, December 13). Knowing what you know in noisy information environments. Invited talk at the Kolloquium Department Wissenschaftskommunikation. KIT, Karlsruhe. [Talk]
Fischer, H. (2022, May 3). How good are IPCC graphs at communicating climate change to policy-makers? Invited talk at The Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Evaluation of Public Policies (LIEPP), Sciences Po. Paris, France. [Talk]
Fischer, H. (2022, June 23-25). Communicating politicized science – A cognitive perspective. Invited talk at the Jubilee Symposium. The Heidelberg Institute of Global Health, Heidelberg University Hospital. [Talk]
Fischer, H. (2022, May 18). A metacognitive perspective on politicized science. Invited talk at the Psychonomic Society's One World Cognitive Psychology Seminar Series. University of Mannheim. [Talk]
Fischer, H., Huff, M., & Said, N. (2022, September 10-15). Political polarization and climate science: No evidence for science literacy driving motivated reasoning in a US national study. Eingeladener Vortrag auf dem 52. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie (DGPs). Symposium "Science Communication--Quo vadis?". Hildesheim. [Talk]
Holford, D., Fasce, A., Tapper, K., Demko, M., Lewandowsky, S., Hahn, U., Al-Rawi, A., Alladin, S., Boender, T. S., Bruns, H., Fischer, H., Gilde, C., Hanel, P. H. P., Herzog, S. M., Kause, A., Lehmann, S., Nurse, M. S., Orr, C., Pescetelli, N., ... Wulf, M. (2022). A manifesto for science communication as collective intelligence. https://dx.doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/TZUFW
Wijermans, N., & Fischer, H. (2022). “AgentEx-Meta” (Version 1.0.0). CoMSES Computational Model Library. https://doi.org/10.25937/cs13-mr12
Dr. Helen Fischer
Schleichstraße 6
