Internship position available at the Social Brain Lab, at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Amsterdam.

Starting date: September 2026

Duration: Minimum 4 months

Topic:

Moral conflicts arise when individuals must decide between actions that benefit themselves while potentially harming others. In real life, the consequences of such decisions are often delayed, unfolding over time. While temporal discounting effects are well-established in reward valuation, their role in moral decisions involving trade-offs between self-gain and harm to others, remains largely unexplored.

This project investigates how individuals assign subjective value to delayed outcomes in moral conflicts, focusing on the behavioral and cognitive biases underlying temporal discounting effects.

Activities:

The student will:

– Run a behavioral experiment and collect behavioral data

– Perform data preprocessing and analyses, and contribute to interpretation of the findings

– Read and discuss relevant scientific literature

– Attend and participate in lab meetings

– Present project progress and findings

Requirements:

We are looking for a motivated student with genuine interest in how temporal delays of positive and aversive outcomes influence moral decision making.

– Curiosity and motivation for the research project

– A background in psychology and/or neuroscience, cognitive science, or a related field is an advantage

– Experience conducting human behavioral experiments is an advantage