Staff Social and Behavioural Sciences

Anouk van der Weiden is a lecturer in social and health psychology. She is involved in teaching and coordinating subjects ranging from social cognition and group processes, to self-regulation and topical issues in health psychology. In addition she supervises bachelor and (research) master theses. Moreover, she is responsible for coordinating the internationalisation of the social, health, and organisational psychology master.

Academic background:

She graduated from Utrecht University’s Master in Social Psychology (cum laude) in 2008 on her thesis that addressed the effect of observed gaze-shifts on object desirability. She then commenced a PhD project on the experience of controlling one’s own actions (experience of self-agency). In 2012, she continued and extended this line of research as a post-doc at the Psychiatry Department of the University Medical Centre in Utrecht. Here, she studied the integration and distinction of self and other in relation to 1) how people perceive own or others’ body or behavior as their own (i.e., experiences of ownership and agency), 2) how these experiences develop over age in both health and disease (i.e. schizophrenia patients and their offspring), and 3) how these experiences affect people’s (inter)actions (e.g., joint action performance, social distance). In 2015, she shifted her focus from experienced action control to actual action control, by studying the ability to control undesired impulses in order to attain long-term health goals (self-regulation) as a post-doc at the self-regulation lab at Utrecht University.