Master's project on social exclusion among minority and majority groups

Social exclusion can have a profound impact on individuals, such as an impaired sense of self-worth and belonging. Moreover, exclusion contributes to the development and maintenance of mental illnesses (e.g. anxiety, depression), which in turn may increase the likelihood of further exclusion.

This Master's project aims to investigate whether belonging to a minority (compared to a majority) influences how often people experience exclusion, how they perceive it, and how they respond to it. Alongside the experiences of those excluded, it is also possible to focus on the perspective of those enacting exclusion.

Specific questions will be developed together with the students. Possible questions are:
• Do majorities and minorities experience a different decline in trust after social exclusion?
• Are there differences between minority and majority members in the tendency towards dehumanization and self-dehumanization?
• People with mental illness experience stigmatization and can perceive themselves as a minority: Do they differ in their coping strategies to handle exclusion experiences?

This Master project is offered by Inès Dufaure de Lajarte in German or English.

Master's project on Loneliness

The Covid-19 pandemic was associated with many negative consequences, including the disruption of social interactions, resulting in an increase of social isolation and loneliness. While the Swiss National COVID-19 Science Task Force (NCS-TF) proposed the inclusion of mitigation measures for main stress factors among pandemic management plans (PMPs) in June 2020, in-depth research on concrete measures and the ethical balancing between prevention of mental health problems versus prevention of virus spread remains scarce.

Not all population groups were equally affected by the social distancing measures. For instance, there are some risk factors which predisposed certain groups to suffer more from loneliness (e. g. being young, previous mental health issues). At the same time, there are also structural factors, which need to be better understood through further research.

We will use a mixed methods approach to fill the existing research gaps (literature reviews, qualitative and quantitative data collection and analyses). The aim is to provide an in-depth exploration into the experiences of people affected by loneliness through individual interviews. Further, a national representative survey will be conducted to describe the acceptability by Swiss citizens of loneliness prevention and alleviation interventions for PMPs. Students will work with the data that is collected within the project.

This master project is offered by Annika Rohrmoser and Gemma María García Calderó in English.

Master's project on trust research in digital times

"Do you trust me?", "You have betrayed my trust!". These are questions and phrases that we are familiar with from everyday life. From a psychological perspective, trust is defined as a psychological state that includes the intention to accept vulnerability based on positive expectations of another person's intentions or behavior. According to this view, trust is a behavioral intention that leads to a greater willingness to take risks in social situations that imply a particular vulnerability (Rousseau et al. 1998, p. 395). Trust research is a very broad field with many possibilities from a social psychological perspective. Current questions on trust also include the factor of technological change. Digital teams, chatGPT and media-mediated communication are starting points for modern questions in a broad field of research.

This Master's project is offered by Anna-Marie Bertram in German or English.

Master's project on call-out culture and diversity of opinion

"Calling out" means publicly criticizing someone for misconduct and thus using social pressure to achieve cultural ostracism of the target. Calling out can be an effective means of holding powerful or privileged people to account. Calling out can therefore give a voice to discriminated or marginalized groups in particular. However, it is also often criticized that calling out restricts the free expression of opinion and open discourse on certain topics and thus reduces diversity of opinion. From a socio-psychological point of view, this topic offers numerous exciting questions, such as What situational and personal circumstances must be in place for people to be willing to engage with contrary opinions (in terms of content)? When does calling out have positive effects (e.g. because it leads to rethinking) and when negative effects (e.g. because it increases polarization and radicalization)? How is the experience and observation of calling out evaluated by outsiders, how does it influence social norms? Is calling out associated with clinically relevant phenomena (e.g. avoidance behavior, dysfunctional attribution styles)?

This Master's project is offered by Melissa Jauch in German or English.

Master's project on suicide prevention research through smartphone-based data collection

Experiences and thoughts in everyday life can be valuable warning signals for suicidal crises. In recent years, the SIMON study (literally "Suicidal Ideation Monitoring") has investigated whether digital technologies can be used to record suicidal thoughts and create an individual health protocol for the person concerned. As part of the follow-up project MULTICAST, predictors of suicidal experience and behavior are to be investigated in three successive sub-projects and new app-based therapy modules are to be developed.
Both SIMON and MULTICAST were and are being led at the University of Zurich by a research team led by Professor Kleim. The Master's projects are supervised in Basel, but there is the option of getting to know the team in Zurich and exchanging ideas and networking. Depending on your focus in the Master's program and personal interests, your research question can be tailored to a topic for which data is already available from SIMON or MULTICAST.
Questions on the topic of suicide research will be developed together in the group and in collaboration with the lecturers in Basel and Zurich during the course of the project.

This Master's project is offered by Anna-Marie Bertram in German or English.

Master's project on social exclusion

Social exclusion means being ignored or left out by other people. Social exclusion can have serious, negative consequences for those affected and has been linked to clinical-psychological dysfunction in past studies. Social exclusion can be unintentional, but can also be used deliberately to avoid (negative) interactions or as a means of punishment. This means that the topic of social exclusion can be examined from various perspectives and against numerous backgrounds. In addition to the perspective of those affected, the perspective of the perpetrator or an outsider can also be considered.
Questions on the topic of social exclusion should be developed together in the group and in collaboration with the lecturer over the course of the project.

This Master's project is offered by Melissa Jauch in German or English.

Master's project on Understanding Conspiracy Theories Belief: A Social Psychological Approach

Conspiracy theories belief can lead to a range of dangerous outcomes, from climate change denial to vaccine hesitancy. Therefore, researchers are striving to identify factors that may drive individuals towards these beliefs. One potential predictor is low social belonging, which might influence conspiracy theories belief. This Master's project aims to explore the relationship between conspiracy theories belief, social belonging, and social exclusion. For instance:

- How are social belonging and conspiracy theories belief interconnected? Could a lower sense of belonging lead to stronger conspiracy theories belief, or do these beliefs harm the social connections a person has?
- After experiencing social exclusion, is conspiracy theories belief more appealing as a way to restore threatened needs compared to other strategies?
- Other questions pertaining to conspiracy theories belief may also be explored following further discussion.

This master's project is offered by Natalia Bogatyreva in English.

Anna-Marie Bertram