Thomas Schilling's
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Profile (ORCiD: 0000-0002-5150-612X)

Research Interests

Academic Education

Professional Qualifications

Here is my university profile

Thomas Schilling, Postdoctoral fellow, University of Zurich and University of Trier

Profile (ORCiD: 0000-0002-5150-612X)

Hi there! Thank you for your interest in learning more about me.

I started my postdoc at the University of Trier (Germany) in May 2022. Previously, I worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Zurich (Switzerland, remote).

I got my PhD in behavioral science (economics) from the School of Economics and Finance at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. During my PhD, I have been funded as a scholar of the Chair in the Economics for Disasters and Climate Change and I have worked on research in the economics sub-discipline of behavioral insurance.

Prior to beginning my PhD degree, I worked for several financial corporations in short-term positions such as assistant auditor (KPMG), portfolio management intern (Deutsche Bank), and project management intern (UBS), while working on or preparing for my university degrees in business administration (majoring in finance and minoring in accounting and economics). I graduated with a master’s degree from the University of Trier, Germany, and participated in fully-funded study abroad programs in the USA with scholarships (PROMOS and ISEP). My master’s thesis was a behavioral study on the susceptibility to framing effects by people who classify as thorough thinkers (as opposed to impulsive doers).

I am also the data analyst, survey and experiment designer, and expert with regard to financial decision-making at Behavioural by Design, a young company that applies behavioral science for good. If you are looking for someone to help your company apply behavioral science to improve your clients' well-being, then please get in touch!

Furthermore, I work on an online course in which I teach behavioral science (currently on hold). If you want to know more, please follow this link. The online course is still work-in-progress and only has about 25% of its content published. I also teach experimental methods and data analysis at the University of Trier, Germany.

Research Interests

My research interest is behavioral science, a cross-research field of social psychology, cognitive psychology, and microeconomics. I focus on the psychological (i.e. emotional, intuitional, and “supposedly irrational”) aspects of human decision-making in various contexts. My research largely involves the association of people's personality with their decisions (personality economics) and an investigation of cognitive biases, heuristics, and how people make decisions and judge about decisions in different situations. My aim is to understand what factors drive financial decisions and consumer choices in various contexts and how we might be able to improve people's decisions/choices. My research uses surveys and experiments to understand people's choices and behaviors.

One big topic of my research is the investigation of how personality traits predict people's financial decisions (e.g., savings, investment, borrowing) and their online consumption (e.g. purchases online). Another topic of my research are dark patterns on digital platforms. Dark patterns are user interface designs that, for example, aim to influence consumers' choices so that they buy more and more impulsively the vendor's target products. These user interface designs were examined by marketing researchers and consumer psychologists for a long time and have recently attracted attention by human-computer interaction scholars, legal scholars, regulators, and policymakers.

Recently, I also ventured into judgment and decision-making research in the broad field of artificial intelligence (AI). I am broadly interested in what factors influence people's trust in and acceptance of AI, and what affects their judgments of justice and fairness of these systems.

During my PhD research, I investigated empirically how and why people make insurance decisions. I used laboratory experiments and secondary (longitudinal survey) data to understand insurance decisions. With experimental data, I investigated home insurance decisions against catastrophes (natural disasters). With secondary data (SOEP), I investigated various insurance decisions. I used personality as predictors of insurance choices. I also studied how people's personality evolves, i.e. what factors affect the development of personality traits.

Academic Education

Doctor of Philosophy in Economics ("Personality Economics"), Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand. (Available here).
Master of Science in Business Administration (specialization in finance and accounting), University of Trier, Trier, Germany.
Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration (specialization in finance and accounting), University of Applied Sciences Trier, Trier, Germany.