Sander’s research is in social and environmental psychology, with a particular focus on environmental risk judgments, perceptions, attitudes, behaviours and decision-making strategies. Sander recently completed his PhD at the LSE. His thesis is titled: The Social-Psychological Determinants of Climate Change Risk Perceptions, Intentions and Behaviours: A National Study.

Sander is currently (2012-2014) a visiting research scholar at Yale University, where he works with Dr. Anthony Leiserowitz at the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication Lab. From September 2014 onwards, Sander will hold a joint appointment in the Department of Psychology and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Sander is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Grantham PhD Scholarship Award (2010), LSE PhD Funding Award (2013), Department of Geography and Environment PhD Research Funding Award (2013), Yale University (YPCCC) Visiting Scholar Funding Award (2012-2014) and the Joachim Herz Stiftung Fellowship (2014) for research on Bounded Rationality at the Max Planck Institute for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition and most recently, the American Psychological Association’s Best Environmental Psychology Student Paper (2014) Award.

Background

Before starting his PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Sander obtained a Bachelor of Applied Sciences (Hons) degree from the HES School of Economics and Management, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands and California State University (CSU), Chico, USA. Sander also holds a MSc degree in Public Policy and Human Development from Maastricht University, The Netherlands, where he specialised in the social psychology of environmental behaviour.

Research interests

• Risk perception and communication;
• Environmental behaviour;
• Behavioural change;
• Social psychology;
• Psychometrics and quantitative psychology;
• Behavioural economics;