ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

The goal of this proposal is to develop and promote Bayesian hypothesis tests for social scientists. By and large, social scientists have ignored the Bayesian revolution in statistics, and, consequently, most social scientists still assess the veracity of experimental effects using the same methodology that was used by their advisors and the advisors before them. This state of affairs is undesirable: social scientists conduct groundbreaking, innovative research only to analyze their results using methods that are old-fashioned or even inappropriate. This imbalance between the science and the statistics has gradually increased the pressure on the field to change the way inferences are drawn from their data. However, three requirements need to be fulfilled before social scientists are ready to adopt Bayesian tests of hypotheses. First, the Bayesian tests need to be developed for problems that social scientists work with on a regular basis; second, the Bayesian tests need to be default or objective; and, third, the Bayesian tests need to be available in a user-friendly computer program. This proposal seeks to make major progress on all three fronts. Concretely, the projects in this proposal build on recent developments in the field of statistics and use the default Jeffreys-Zellner-Siow priors to compute Bayesian hypothesis tests for regression, correlation, the t-test, and different versions of analysis of variance (ANOVA). A similar approach will be used to develop Bayesian hypothesis tests for logistic regression and the analysis of contingency tables, as well as for popular latent process methods such as factor analysis and structural equation modeling. We aim to implement the various tests in a new computer program, Bayes-SPSS, with a similar look and feel as the frequentist spreadsheet program SPSS (i.e., Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). Together, these projects may help revolutionize the way social scientists analyze their data.

1 498 286 €

Start date: 2012-05-01, End date: 2017-04-30

The origins of imperialism, a socio-military system in which hegemony is achieved over alien territories, are poorly investigated. This applies in particular to how imperial strategies affected local communities. This project will investigate the hegemonic practices of one of the earliest stable empires: that of the Assyrians, by focussing on the Late Bronze Age fortified estate at Tell Sabi Abyad, ca. 1230-1180 BC. The Assyrians created a network of strongholds in conquered territories to consolidate their hegemony. The fortified estate at Tell Sabi Abyad is the only extensively investigated of these Assyrian settlements. This settlement is both small and well preserved and has been completely excavated. The complete plan facilitates a study of the spatial properties of this fortress and how it structured interactions. Further, the estate contained a wealth of in situ finds, which allow for a reconstruction of activity patterns in the settlement. Finally, over 400 cuneiform tablets were found which shed light on the local social and economic situation and the broader imperial context. This project will provide a bottom up perspective on the Assyrian Empire. Elements of the Tell Sabi Abyad estate that will be investigated include: spatial characteristics; activity areas; the agricultural economy; and the surrounding landscape. Further, data from the Middle Assyrian Empire at large will be reconsidered, in order to achieve a better understanding of how this empire was constituted. This project is innovative because: it investigates a spatial continuum ranging from room to empire; brings together types of data usually investigated in isolation, such as texts and artifacts; will involve the use of novel techniques; and will investigate the short term normally beyond the scope of archaeology. The research will contribute to the cross-cultural issue of how hegemonic control is achieved in alien territories, and add to our understanding of early empires.

1 191 127 €

Start date: 2012-01-01, End date: 2015-12-31

Apathy is a prominent and severely debilitating aspect of several psychiatric disorders, most notably schizophrenia. Little is known regarding the neuroscientific basis of apathy, however. Clinically, it has been suggested that two forms of apathy can be distinguished: cognitive apathy (CA) which concerns reduced initiative to start daily activities and social-emotional apathy (SEA) which concerns reduced interest in otherwise gratifying activities. I hypothesize that CA is primarily a dysfunction of cognitive control and self-initiated action, whereas SEA is primarily a failure to signal the salience of positive events. The present project, for the first time, tests the hypothesis that two neuroanatomically distinct routes underlie these two forms of apathy: a dorsal frontostriatal circuit including also the right parietal cortex for CA (associated with abnormalities of glutamate neurotransmission), and a more ventral frontostriatal circuit including the reward system for SEA (involving abnormal dopamine transmission). The objective of this project is threefold. First, to investigate the two neural circuits in relation to the two forms of apathy using functional MRI and positron emission tomography. Second, I will test the hypothesis that CA is associated with poorer long-term functioning using longitudinal data. Third, we will conduct a controlled treatment study of a novel intervention to improve CA: transcranial magnetic stimulation over the right prefrontal cortex to target the relevant network. Thus, the present proposal aims to elucidate fundamental cognitive and emotional processes underlying apathy by unravelling the neural basis of two pathways that may lead to apathy. Last but not least, the treatment study may contribute to novel strategies that will ultimately improve patients’ lives. The results will also have implications for understanding apathy in patients with depression, brain damage and neurodegenerative diseases.

1 499 780 €

Start date: 2013-04-01, End date: 2018-03-31

By focussing on how the sublime was used in Amsterdam and Paris in grands travaux and in the theatre and spectacle as part of a strategy to persuade the population of the regime’s legitimacy, this program aims to reconstruct an unknown part of the history of the sublime, and lay the foundation for a study of its role in the visual arts and the theatre of early modern Europe. The hypothesis of this program is that early, often hitherto unknown editions and varieties of the sublime from France and the Dutch Republic should be understood primarily against a political background. Many of these were dedicated to important members of ruling families, made for prominent politicians, or read by the ruling classes. Many poems, plays, spectacle, paintings, buildings and public spaces that were experienced as sublime have clear connections with political issues, in particular with the legitimacy of new rulers or regimes, the murder of politicians, or even regicide. In Amsterdam and Paris conspicuous public works served to proclaim that legitimacy, but also became the locus of its contestation. The sublime was used both as a means of persuasion and as a way of articulating the effect of these works on the viewer.

1 245 742 €

Start date: 2013-02-01, End date: 2018-01-31

How did free agents (entrepreneurs operating outside of the state-sponsored monopolies) in Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire react to the creation of colonial monopolies (royal monopolies and chartered companies) by centralized states between 1500 and 1750? This question will be answered by looking at the role individuals played in the construction of informal empires, defined as a multitude of self-organized networks operating world-wide, whose main goal was safeguarding personal advantages and maximizing profits, in spite of state intervention. Self-organized networks of free agents fought royal monopolies held by the Ottoman Sultans, the Iberian and French Kings and the Dutch, English, Swedish and Danish chartered companies. Free agents, their families and networks operated, in the Atlantic and/or Asia, across geographical borders between empires, went beyond the restrictions imposed by religious differences, ethnicity, defying the interests of the central states in Europe and Asia, questioning loyalties and redefining identities. This informal empire brought to fruition by the individual choices of free agents and their networks as a reaction to the State imposed monopolies was, I hypothesize, a borderless, self-organized, often cross-cultural, multi-ethnic, pluri-national and stateless world. My approach is innovative in that it employs a theoretical grid for the analysis of the instances in which Early Modern monopolies were challenged, mediated, co-opted or simply hijacked by free agents. My model delineates actions and re-actions such as illegal activities, cooperative strategies or extensive collaboration between networks and the central states. Based on the unique comparison between Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire, as well as in the analyses of the Atlantic and Asian expansions of European powers, my proposal will pioneer a new approach to the comparative history of empires during the Early Modern period.

1 499 933 €

Start date: 2013-01-01, End date: 2017-12-31

Current global-scale research on environmental change has a strong focus on the physical processes that underlie changes in the earth system. Although global environmental change is driven by individual and collective human decisions, most earth system and integrated assessment models lack a proper representation of variation in human decision making. The importance of variation in local context has caused much social-science research on the underlying driving factors and decision making structures to focus on local case studies. Consequently, important insights from social-science have been ignored in global-scale assessment models. The proposed research, which focuses on land system change as one of the dominant processes of global environmental change, contributes to a new generation of integrated global assessment models. These models will explicitly account for the (spatial) variation in decision making to support the design of earth system governance. An improved understanding of the factors that drive decision making will be obtained through a novel approach for the meta-analysis of existing case studies worldwide. Supplementary empirical evidence will be collected by analyzing a number of transects and disentangling the global and local factors that influence land change decisions. Generalized, global-scale multi-agent modelling systems that represent variation in decision making will be developed. While the current approaches are driven mainly by changes in consumption patterns and demography, we propose an alternative approach that accounts for the full range of ecosystem service demands and explicitly addresses the spatial relationship between demand and supply of those services that influence decision making. Incorporating the findings into existing integrated assessment models will be supported by a trans-disciplinary approach to identify the requirements of the science-policy process in earth system governance.

1 499 639 €

Start date: 2013-02-01, End date: 2019-01-31

This research project is the first comprehensive interdisciplinary study into the so far unrecognised interplay between two major social trends of the post-war period: the upward trend in income inequality, and the increase of owner-occupation. Using a comparative perspective, the project aims at constructing a unified account by means of a systematic analysis of: 1) the ‘driving’ forces of both social trends; 2) the ways in which the upswing in income inequality and the expansion of home-ownership might reinforce or counteract each other and hence lead to a redistribution of social and economic risks; 3) how the statistical relationships between variables at the macro-level play out in diverse institutional settings, looking through a more in-depth historical-comparative lens; 4) how the macro-level relationships between both social trends are negotiated by households and individuals as their housing, labour market and family trajectories unfold; 5) how households and individuals negotiate between their perceptions of the economic benefits and risks associated with home-ownership and the ‘real-life’-opportunities and constraints; and 6) how these norms have changed over time as a result of increased income inequality and/or increasing home-ownership rates. Answers will be provided by means of an innovative multi-method and cross-nationally comparative research design. In four subprojects, I will look at these issues through various lenses, using diverse methods of analysis. I take a longitudinal-historical approach, focussing on the post-war era. My scope ranges from large-scale quantitative analysis of country-level data and of individual retrospective and prospective housing, labour and family trajectories to a comparative in-depth case study of institutional developments in a selection of countries. Different analytical approaches are combined in all proposed subprojects.

1 200 396 €

Start date: 2012-02-01, End date: 2017-05-31

"The mid-2000s saw the emergence of large-scale land acquisitions. While processes of agricultural ‘land grabbing’ have received considerable global attention, particularly in Africa, the land grabbing issue in the countries of the post-Soviet region has gone largely unnoticed This research proposal aims to explore this omission in the ‘land grab’ debate by studying the case of Russia. The main research question is: To what extent and how has global land grabbing occurred in Russia, with what implications to local communities, and how have local communities resisted or modified these land deals (if at all)? The proposed research is pertinent by providing a case distinct from other regions, which is likely to raise new insights on global land grabbing. Several features make the case of Russia remarkably divergent. First, whereas in most parts of the world the current trends see an increase in population density and marginal and forest land being converted into cultivated land, Russia is witness to massive land abandonment and reforestation. Another particular feature is the low level presence of an autonomously organized civil society (which also manifests on the issue of land grabbing contestation). This research will be the first comprehensive study of land grabbing and related rural social movements in Russia and the post-Soviet area at large. Rural movements have been studied mainly in Latin-America, Africa and Asia. In contrast, research on rural movements in post/reform socialist contexts (such as China) is still in its infancy, and practically absent in Russia. The proposed research aims to establish a new field of ‘(post)-socialist land grabbing and rural social mobilisation’ studies. Moreover, it will contribute to more broad debates on civil society and protest in state dominated, post/reform-socialist countries, by studying these issues from the perspective of the (mostly ignored) rural areas."

820 832 €

Start date: 2013-01-01, End date: 2017-12-31

The standard logical approaches to belief revision or scientific theory change assume either that the reality under investigation is static or at least that the ontic changes are un-correlated with the doxastic/epistemic change. But in numerous situations, the very act of learning new information may change the reality that is being learnt. Such situations were studied in Quantum Physics, Economics and Social Science, but have not been much investigated from the perspective of Philosophy of Science and the Logic of Theory Change. An example is the way in which an introspective agent changes her beliefs when learning new higher-order information, i.e. information that may refer to her own beliefs. A similar situation arises when a scientist learns about a phenomenon by performing measurements that perturb the very phenomenon under study. In Quantum Mechanics, this property that “observation causes perturbation” (the so-called observer effect) lies at the basis of most applications in quantum communication. We find similar examples in Psychology when a psychological test changes the very facts under investigation. More complex such scenarios of correlated information change occur in groups of communicating agents, whenever some agents’ knowledge about the others’ belief changes influence their own beliefs. What these examples have in common is that the very act of learning (individually or in group) can influence the results of learning, by changing the phenomena under study. In this project we develop a new unified logical setting to handle these different types of correlated information change in a multi-agent context. This setting is based on bringing together the insights and methods of Dynamic Epistemic Logic, Quantum Logic, Belief Revision Theory, Truth Approximation and Learning Theory. We plan to investigate applications of this setting to various areas of philosophy, ranging from social epistemology to philosophy of information and philosophy of science.

1 380 650 €

Start date: 2012-01-01, End date: 2016-12-31

People show a strong inclination for multitasking: they use multiple devices while driving a car, students do homework while sending text-messages and watching television, and office workers rapidly switch from one task to another. It is crucial to understand the role of multitasking in modern society, whether in terms of set-ting legal limits to multitasking in cases where it leads to unacceptable risks, or designing work situations in which productivity is supported or security is maintained. The goal of this project is to understand what circumstances change a person from an effective multitasker into one overwhelmed by too many demands, and to design countermeasures to keep people in control. A strong interdisciplinary research program in this area is necessary, because improper multitasking can lead to increased risks, loss of productivity and even long-term decrements in cognitive abilities. To investigate these questions we have developed two new groundbreaking methods. The first is the threaded cognition computational model of multitasking. Threaded cognition predicts when and how tasks interfere, by simulating the cognitive processes in the mind. The second is a new method highlighting the areas of interference. This done by using threaded cognition to analyze fMRI neuroimaging data, mapping functional units in the model onto brain areas. The new challenge is to use both methods to understand and predict how people select tasks for multitasking. The unique combination of methods is expected to result in fundamental knowledge on identifying the mechanisms that determine human task decisions, and in under-standing how sequences of such decisions can lead to multitasking situations with dangerous cognitive over-load or productivity dead-ends. Understanding the cognitive mechanisms of task selection in multitasking can be crucially important in designing multitasking environments that improve productivity and safety in-stead of thwarting it.

1 434 574 €

Start date: 2011-11-01, End date: 2016-10-31

This study investigates the mechanistic bases of human freeze-fight-flight reactions. The ability to control our social behavior is essential for almost every social interaction. It frequently fails in challenging situations when people fall back on basic defensive „freeze-fight-flight‟ (FFF) reactions. It chronically fails in social motivational disorders, with social anxiety as one extreme, and aggression as another. Such disorders are notoriously resistant to therapy. Accordingly, it is essential that we obtain mechanistic insight into the psychological and neurobiological control of human FFF behavior. Upon a social challenge, an automatic attentive immobility, the freeze reaction, serves fast risk-assessment, needed to optimize subsequent fight-or-flight responses. Precise temporal tuning of FFF responses is critical to adequate coping with social challenges. It is orchestrated by complex neuroendocrine systems, utilizing the steroid hormone testosterone. Imbalances in the temporal dynamics and associated neuroendocrine control of FFF behaviors are highly predictive of animal fear and aggression. Testing these mechanisms in humans is critical to advance mechanistic insight in human FFF control, but has as of yet been foreclosed in the absence of the requisite tools to objectively measure human FFF. Recent innovations have enabled us to demonstrate that human freeze reactions to social threat mimic animal freeze responses (bodily immobility and fear bradycardia). These findings open up paths toward investigating the role of FFF reactions in social motivational disorders. The major aim of the proposed research program is to reveal the mechanistic basis of human FFF regulation through the use of three cutting-edge methods: First I intend to integrate body-postural and electroencephalographic measures to detect, for the first time, the temporal dynamics and neuroendocrine control of the full FFF sequence in healthy individuals and patients with social anxiety and aggressive disorders. Second, I will apply hormonal and neural interventions to directly manipulate human FFF control using testosterone administration and transcranial magnetic stimulation. Third, and most crucially, I will validate the predictive value of basic FFF tendencies prospectively in a large longitudinal study. I will test adolescents in a critical transition phase (age 14-17) when they are most vulnerable to social and hormonal influences and when most symptoms develop. The projected findings will advance core theoretical knowledge of the mechanistic basis of human emotion regulation. Moreover they are of critical importance for clinical treatment and society, breaking the grounds for early symptom detection and (preventive) intervention into social anxiety and aggressive disorders that form an ever-growing burden for society.

1 499 530 €

Start date: 2013-06-01, End date: 2018-05-31

Navigating through the environment evokes complex changes of visual, auditory, vestibular, tactile and motor inputs to the brain. Yet, despite this motion, we perceive the world as a stable reality, maintain an integrated sense of where we are, and are able to act rather effortlessly upon surrounding objects. To date, little is known about how the processes for perception and action are maintained dynamically. This project is concerned with the learning and control strategies for perception and action in real-world accelerating environments. Its basic premise, based on statistical optimality principles, is that perception and action problems are related in many ways, not only at the computational level but also at the neural implementation level. The project aims to understand the computational algorithm and its neural embodiment for estimating the state of the world and selecting the right action in accelerating environments, distinguishing contributions of sensory, motor, and cognitive signals. A multidisciplinary approach will be used to understand the neural solutions at different scales and at different levels of abstraction (i.e. brain, behavior, simulations). In three projects, an experimental paradigm will be exploited in which healthy subjects and patients make perceptual judgments and generate motor actions in an accelerating environment. Guided by a comprehensive optimal control framework, behavioral measures will be combined with imaging (EEG) and neural perturbation (TMS) techniques in healthy subjects as well as sensory deprived subjects and cerebellar patients, to identify (adaptive) mechanisms and internal models for perception and action control under whole-body acceleration. This multi-pronged project will be directed at establishing causal links between spatiotemporal neural activation patterns and dynamic sensorimotor integration, and investigate the extent to which such links depend on the integrity of particular brain areas and sensory systems.

1 495 750 €

Start date: 2012-01-01, End date: 2016-12-31

Atmospheric CO2 concentrations have risen rapidly since pre-industrial times and our current climate is not yet in equilibrium with this; it will change. To obtain insight in the type and magnitude of this change and to validate climate models used to project these changes, we need to look back at past climates. The most recent time in Earth history with CO2 levels that were similar to today is the Pliocene. The Pliocene thus provides a unique window into a world that exhibited many of the climate characteristics that we might experience. These are documented by proxies locked into sedimentary archives, especially marine sediments. It remains a challenge for palaeoclimatologists, however, to quantify past terrestrial temperatures. I have recently developed a novel proxy for quantitative annual mean air temperature reconstruction, which is based on the distribution of membrane lipids synthesised by soil bacteria. Upon soil erosion these molecules are transported to the marine realm where they become part of the marine sedimentary archive. The PlioProx project aims at a quantitative reconstruction of continental temperatures and latitudinal temperature gradients for the Pliocene. This will be achieved by applying this new palaeothermometer to high resolution marine sediment records near river outflows to generate river-basin integrated records of continental air temperature. This approach also allows for a direct comparison to reconstructed sea surface temperatures. Using globally distributed sediment records, latitudinal temperature gradients will be constructed which will be compared to moisture transport and rainout, reconstructed using stable hydrogen isotopes from plant wax lipids. Results will provide vital new insights in climate evolution on land under elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations. It will also contribute to improving the next generation earth system models that are used to predict future climate.

1 500 000 €

Start date: 2012-10-01, End date: 2017-09-30

"Most languages have a fairly well developed system of words for numbers, called numerals. It is cross-linguistically common, moreover, for languages to have a very rich paradigm of modifiers of such numerals. For instance, English allows the numeral ""fifty"" to be modified by comparatives (""more than 50""), (adverbial) superlatives (""at least 50""), equatives (""as many as 50""), locative prepositions (""over 50""), directional prepositions (""up to 50""), disjunctions (""50 or more"") and adverbs (""exactly 50""). As illustrated by the set of English modifiers, typically, such paradigms do not consist of specialised vocabulary but instead consist of expressions 'borrowed' from other areas of the grammar. This project sets out to use the rich vocabulary of modified numerals to make advances in semantics and pragmatics. In particular, we will look at a subset of modifiers that have restrictions on their use, restrictions that may be obviated in specific contexts. This subset contains e.g. adverbial superlatives and directional prepositions. Accordingly, there is a semantic connection between superlativity and spatial expression that needs to be explored. More importantly, however, the found connections will clarify the nature of numerical, and more generally scalar, quantification. This is very welcome, since there is a surprising lack of insight in how we use numerical expressions to communicate quantitative information. In particular, there is no consensus as to what semantic and pragmatic processes govern the relatively simple meanings conveyed by sentences containing numerals and similarly scalar expressions. What is needed right now to break through this standstill are projects that aim at uncovering hitherto unexplored connections within language. Significant theoretical progress moreover relies on access to large bodies of new and reliable data. To this end, the project includes in-depth cross-linguistic and experimental studies."

1 300 518 €

Start date: 2013-03-01, End date: 2018-02-28

"The concept of Plate Tectonics, as fundamentally unifying to Earth Sciences as Darwin’s Evolution Theory is to Life Sciences, mathematically describes the complex evolution of Earth’s outer shell in terms of lithosphere plates and their interactions. There is no widely accepted dynamic mechanism, however, that explains why plate tectonics developed and continues. Subduction of oceanic lithosphere into the mantle, compensated by spreading of new oceanic lithosphere elsewhere is a key element of plate tectonics. Half of the subduction zones active today formed in the Cenozoic, and subduction initiation must be a common and fundamental element of plate tectonics. Geophysical models demonstrate that forcing is required to initiate subduction at weakness zones. Mechanisms producing this forcing remain unexplored, but may include clogging of existing subduction zones with continental lithosphere, formation of high plateaus as a result of absolute plate motions and arrival of mantle plumes below plates. I aim to identify the mechanisms that force subduction initiation, using a novel and multidisciplinary approach. (1) I will design a Natural Laboratory, in which subduction initiation events, absolute and relative plate motions, continental subduction and mantle plumes are reconstructed. The Alpine-Himalayan mountain range that formed during closure of the Neotethyan Ocean is an ideal natural laboratory in which subduction initiation events and geological expressions of all potential driving mechanisms have been and will be reconstructed. (2) To test whether the reconstructed geological ‘incidents’ are causally related, a Numerical Laboratory will be designed, to conduct numerical modeling experiments based on fundamental geophysics. SINK will iteratively integrate the natural and numerical laboratories to advance our understanding of the processes that drive subduction initiation, as an essential step towards a dynamic and quantitative model to explain plate tectonics."

1 499 880 €

Start date: 2012-09-01, End date: 2017-08-31