Michael Geers

Michael Geers

PhD student in Psychology

Max Planck Institute for Human Development

I am a fourth-year PhD student in Psychology at the Center for Adaptive Rationality (ARC) at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin.

My research primarily focuses on consumer behavior in digital environments, currently pertaining to misinformation and microtargeting.

Prior to joining ARC, I earned a Master of Behavioral and Decision Sciences from the University of Pennsylvania. I also completed an MSc in Marketing with distinction (Trinity College Dublin) and a BA in Business Administration (Provadis School of International Management and Technology).


Publications and working papers (updated September 2023):

Geers, M., Swire-Thompson, B., Lorenz-Spreen, P., Herzog, S.M., Kozyreva, A., & Hertwig, R. The online misinformation engagement framework. Invited submission for Current Opinion in Psychology.

Kozyreva, A., Lorenz-Spreen, P., Herzog, S.M., Ecker, U.K. H., Lewandowsky, S., Hertwig, R., Basol M., Berinsky, A.J., Betsch, C., Cook, J., Fazio, L.K., Geers, M., Guess, A. M., Maertens, R., Panizza, F., Pennycook, G., Rand, D., Rathje, S., Reifler, J., Roozenbeek, J., Schmid, P., Smith, M., Swire- Thomson, B., Szewach, P., van der Linden, S., & Wineburg, S. Toolbox of interventions against online misinformation and manipulation. R&R at Nature Human Behaviour.

Geers, M., Fischer, H., Lewandowsky, S., & Herzog, S.M. The political (a)symmetry of metacognitive insight into detecting misinformation. Under review at Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Geers, M. (2023). Linking lab and field research. Nature Reviews Psychology.

Sultan, M., Tump, A. N., Geers, M., Lorenz-Spreen, P., Herzog, S., & Kurvers, R. (2022). Time pressure reduces misinformation discrimination ability but does not alter response bias. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 1-12.

Roozenbeek, J., Maertens, R., Herzog, S.M., Geers, M., Kurvers, R.H.J.M., Sultan, M., & van der Linden, S. (2022). Susceptibility to misinformation is consistent across question framings and response modes and better explained by myside bias and partisanship than analytical thinking. Judgment and Decision Making, 17(3), 547–573.

Lorenz-Spreen, P., Geers, M., Pachur, T., Hertwig, R., Lewandowsky, S., & Herzog, S.M. (2021). Boosting people’s ability to detect microtargeted advertising. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 1-9.