Dr. Katharina Schwarz

Research Interests

Agency

Sensory Attenuation

Acting in a Social Context

Action Control

Expectations can influence perception and behaviour in many ways. Listen to Katharina talking about expectancy effects with Stephan Karkowsky on Radio 1, Die Profis, and with Ralf Caspary on SWR2, Impuls. (German)

Cannot get enough of science podcasts? What about this one by Katharina Hübel (Bayern 2) in which Mario Gollwitzer (LMU München) and Katharina talk about the effect of expectations. (German)

 

Awards

Katharina Schwarz has been awarded this year's scientific award of the ZONTA club Würzburg (ZONTA-Wissenschaftspreis 2022). Congratulations!

The award will be presented on October 12th, 2022, 7pm, in the Owald-Külpe-Hörsaal as part of a public ceremony including a talk by Katharina (find details here).

 

Publications

Pfister, R., Schwarz, K. A., Holzmann, P., Reis, M., Yogeeswaran, K., & Kunde, W. (2023). Headlines win elections: Mere exposure to fictitious news media alters voting behavior. PLOS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289341

Reis, M., Pfister, R., & Schwarz, K. A. (2023). The value of control. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. doi: 10.1002/bdm.2325

Schwarz, K. A., Tonn, S., Büttner, J., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2023). Sense of agency in social hierarchies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. doi: 10.1037/xge0001426

Schwarz, K. A., & Weller, L. (2023). Distracted to a fault - Attention, actions, and time perception. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 85, 301-314. pdf.

Foerster, A., Steinhauser, M., Schwarz, K. A., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2022). Error cancellation. Royal Society Open Science, 9(3). https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.210397

Schwarz, K. A., Klaffehn, A. L., Hauke-Forman, N., Muth, F. V., & Pfister, R. (2022). Never run a changing system: Action-effect contingency shapes prospective agency. Cognition, 229, 105250.

Pfister, R.*, Tonn, S.*, Weller, L., Kunde, W., & Schwarz, K. A. (2021).  To prevent means to know: Explicit but no implicit agency for prevention behavior. Cognition, 206(104489), 1-6. doi:  10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104489 (* = equal author contribution) pdf.

Tonn, S., Pfister, R., Klaffehn, A. L., Weller, L., Schwarz, K. A. (2021). Two faces of temporal binding: Action- and effect-binding are not correlated. Consciousness and Cognition, 96, 103219. doi:  10.1016/j.concog.2021.103219 pdf.

Weller, L., Schwarz, K. A., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2020). Something  from nothing: Agency for deliberate nonactions. Cognition, 104136, 1-10.  pdf. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2019.104136

Pfister, R., Wirth, R., Weller, L., Foerster, A., & Schwarz, K. A. (2019). Taking shortcuts: Cognitive conflict during motivated rule-breaking. Journal of Economic Psychology, 71, 138-147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2018.06.005   pdf.

Schwarz, K. A., Sprenger, C., Hidalgo, P., Pfister, R., Diekhof, E. K., & Büchel, C. (2019). How stereotypes affect pain. Scientific Reports. 9, 8626.  pdf.doi:10.1038/s41598-019-45044-y

Schwarz, K. A., Weller, L., Klaffehn, A. L., & Pfister, R. (2019). The effects of action choice on temporal binding, agency ratings, and their correlation. Consciousness and Cognition, 75, 102807.

Schwarz, K. A., Weller, L., Pfister, R., & Kunde, W. (2019). Connecting action control and agency: Does action-effect binding affect temporal binding? Consciousness and Cognition, 76, 102833. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2019.102833 pdf.

Klaffehn, A. L.,  Schwarz, K. A., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2018). Similar task-switching performance of real-time strategy and first-person shooter players: Implications for cognitive training. Journal of Cognitive Enhancement, 2(3), 240-258. pdf. doi:10.1007/s41465-018-0066-3

Pfister, R., & Schwarz, K. A. (2018). Should we pre-date the beginning of scientific psychology to 1787? Frontiers in Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 9, 2481. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02481

Schwarz, K. A., Burger, S., Dignath, D., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2018). Action-effect binding and agency. Consciousness and Cognition, 65, 304-309. pdf.

Schwarz, K. A., Pfister, R., Kluge, M., Weller, L., & Kunde, W. (2018). Do we see it or not? Sensory attenuation in the visual domain. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(3), 418-430. pdf.

Schwarz, K.A.*, Pfister, R.*, Wirth, R., & Kunde, W. (2018). Dissociating action-effect activation and effect-based response selection. Acta Psychologica, 188, 16-24. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.05.007 (* = equal author contribution) pdf.

Weller, L., Schwarz, K. A., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2018). My mistake? Enhanced error processing for commanded compared to passively observed actions. Psychophysiology. pdf. doi: 10.1111/psyp.13057 http://rdcu.be/EmVc

Jusyte, A., Pfister, R., Mayer, S. V., Schwarz, K. A., Wirth, R., Kunde, W., & Schönenberg, M. (2017). Smooth criminal: Convicted rule-breakers show reduced cognitive conflict during deliberate rule violations. Psychological Research, 81(5), 939-946. pdf. doi: 10.1007/s00426-016-0798-6

Muth, F. V., Schwarz, K. A., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2017). Feeling watched: What determines perceived observation? Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 4(3), 298-309. pdf.

Pfister, R., Schwarz, K. A., Wirth, R., & Lindner, I. (2017). My command, my act: Observation inflation in face-to-face interactions. Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 13(2), 166-176. pdf. doi: 10.5709/acp-0216-8

Schwarz, K. A., Pfister, R., & Büchel, C. (2017). The Being a Patient effect: Negative expectations based on group labeling and corresponding treatment affect patient performance. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 23(1), 99-105. pdf.

Weller, L., Schwarz, K. A., Kunde, W., & Pfister, R. (2017). Was it me? - Filling the interval between action and effects increases agency but not sensory attenuation. Biological Psychology, 123, 241-249. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2016.12.015

Holtfrerich, S. K. C., Schwarz, K. A., Sprenger, C., Reimers, L., & Diekhof, E. K. (2016). Endogenous testosterone and exogenous oxytocin modulate attentional processing of infant faces. PLoS ONE, 11(11), e0166617. pdf  doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0166617

Pfister, R., Wirth, R., Schwarz, K. A., Foerster, A., Steinhauser, M., & Kunde, W. (2016). The electrophysiological signature of deliberate rule violations. Psychophysiology, 53, 1870-1877. pdf. doi: 10.1111/psyp.12771

Pfister, R., Wirth, R., Schwarz, K. A., Steinhauser, M., & Kunde, W. (2016). Burdens of non-conformity: Motor execution reveals cognitive conflict during deliberate rule violations. Cognition, 147, 93-99. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2015.11.009
pdf

Schwarz, K. A., & Pfister, R. (2016). Scientific psychology in the 18th century: a historical rediscovery. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(3), 399-407. pdf.

Schwarz, K. A., Pfister, R., & Büchel C. (2016). Rethinking explicit expectations: Connecting placebos, social cognition, and contextual perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(6), 469-480. pdf.

Schwarz, K. A., & Büchel, C. (2015). Cognition and the placebo effect - Dissociating subjective perception and actual performance. PLoS ONE, 10(7), e0130492. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0130492. pdf.

Wieser, M. J., Gerdes, A., Büngel, I., Schwarz, K. A., Mühlberger, A., & Pauli, P. (2014) Not so harmless anymore: How context impacts the perception and electrocortical processing of neutral faces. NeuroImage 93, 74-82. pdf.

Pfister, R., Foerster, A., Schwarz, K. A., & Wirth, R. (2014). Lässt sich ein guter Hochstapler als solcher entlarven? Wenn ja: Wie? In: W. Schwanebeck (Ed.), Über Hochstapelei: Perspektiven auf eine kulturelle Praxis (pp. 63-72). Berlin: Neofelis.

Pfister, R., Schwarz, K. A., Janczyk, M., Dale, R., & Freeman, J. B. (2013). Good things peak in pairs: A note on the bimodality coefficient. Frontiers in Quantitive Psychology and Measurement, 4, 700. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00700. pdf.

Pfister, R., Schwarz, K. A., Carson, R., & Janczyk, M. (2013). Easy methods for extracting individual regression slopes: Comparing SPSS, R, and Excel. Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology, 9(2), 72-78. pdf.

Schwarz, K. A., Wieser, M.J., Gerdes A. B. M., Mühlberger, A., & Pauli, P. (2013). Why are you looking like that? How the context influences evaluation and processing of human faces. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 8, 438-445. pdf.

Pfister, R., Schwarz, K. A., & Janczyk, M. (2012). Ubi irritatio, ibi affluxus: A 19th century perspective on haemodynamic brain activity. Cortex, 48(8), 1061-1063. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2012.05.006. pfd.