Dr. Anna Lang

Competencies, Personality, Learning Environments | NEPS Stage 5: From Higher Education to the Labor Market

Vita

08/2026
Substudy Lead at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories, Bamberg – NEPS Stage 5
10/2024– 07/2026
Lecturer in Decision Psychology at the University of Hagen, Department of General Psychology: Judgment, Decision Making, and Action
11/2018– 08/2024
Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Erfurt, Department of Social, Organizational, and Economic Psychology & Center for Empirical Research in Economics and Behavioral Sciences
10/2018
Doctorate (Dr. phil.), University of Erfurt (“Children’s Probabilistic Judgment and Decision Making,” summa cum laude)
10/2012– 11/2017
Researcher at the University of Erfurt, DFG Project “Probabilistic Decision Making in Children,” Department of Social, Organizational, and Economic Psychology
10/2009– 09/2012
Studies in Psychology (M.Sc.) and Communication Science (B.A.), University of Erfurt

Research interests

  • Development of decision-making competence across the lifespan
  • Political socialization in childhood and adolescence
  • Rationality and adaptivity in decision making
  • Decision-making autonomy in childhood and adolescence

    • Publications

    2025

    Lang, A. (2025). Adolescent voting competence: Can 14- to 17-year-olds vote as well as their parents? Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 101, Article 101883. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2025.101883

    2024

    Lang, A., & Betsch, T. (2024). Children learn simple, adaptive decision strategies from probabilistic feedback. Journal of Cognition and Development, 25(1), 148-173. https://doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2023.2248257

    2023

    Lang, A. (2023). Voting at 16? 16–17-year-old Germans vote as correctly as adults. Political Psychology, 44(4), 857-870. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12892

    2022

    Aßmann, L., Betsch, T., Lang, A., & Lindow, S. (2022). When even the smartest fail to prioritise: Overuse of information can decrease decision accuracy. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 34(5), 675-690. https://doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2022.2055560
    Lindow, S., & Lang, A. (2022). A lifespan perspective on decision‐making: A cross‐sectional comparison of middle childhood, young adulthood, and older adulthood. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 35(3), Article e2268. https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.2268

    2021

    Lang, A. (2021). Teaching children to take the best. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 72, Article 101234. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2020.101234

    2018

    Lang, A., & Betsch, T. (2018). Children’s neglect of probabilities in decision making with and without feedback. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, Article 191. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00191