Heisenberg Professor for Medical Risk Literacy & Evidence-Based Decision Making, Charité, Berlin
Vita
Odette Wegwarth obtained her diploma in psychology from the University of Potsdam in 2003. In 2007, she earned her doctorate from Humboldt University of Berlin. She then worked as a postdoctoral researcher until 2008 and as a research associate until 2011 at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (Harding Center for Risk Literacy). In 2011, she became a Senior Scientist there. In 2015, Wegwarth completed her habilitation at Charité in Berlin and received the Venia Legendi for medical sociology and rehabilitation sciences.
From 2015 to 2016, she served as the chairwoman of the "Healthcare Foundation" in Berlin. At the same time, she led the FORECEE project at the Harding Center. In 2017, Wegwarth returned as a scientist to the "Adaptive Behavior and Cognition" department at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. Since the retirement of the department director Gerd Gigerenzer in 2017, Wegwarth has been working as a Senior Research Scientist and research group leader in the "Adaptive Rationality" department. In 2020, the German Research Foundation awarded Wegwarth a Heisenberg Professorship, which is based at Charité.
Selected Publications
Franzen, D., Müller-Birn, C., & Wegwarth, O. (2024). Communicating the Privacy-Utility Trade-off: Supporting Informed Data Donation with Privacy Decision Interfaces for Differential Privacy. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 8(CSCW1), 1-56.
Wegwarth, O., Hoffmann, T. C., Goldacre, B., Spies, C., & Giese, H. A. (2024). General practitioners’ risk literacy and real-world prescribing of potentially hazardous drugs: a cross-sectional study. BMJ Quality & Safety.
Giese, H., Neth, H., Wegwarth, O., Gaissmaier, W., & Stok, F. M. (2024). How to convince the vaccine‐hesitant? An ease‐of‐access nudge, but not risk‐related information increased Covid vaccination‐related behaviors in the unvaccinated. Applied Psychology: Health and Well‐Being, 16(1), 198-215.
Wegwarth, O., Hertwig, R., Giese, H., & Fineberg, H. V. (2024). The impact of nontransparent health communication during the covid-19 pandemic on vaccine-hesitant people’s perception of vaccines. Frontiers in Public Health, 11, 1256829.
Wegwarth, O., & Scherer, M. (2023). COVID-19-Impfzögerlichkeit: interaktive Simulationen vs. textbasierte Informationen bei der Risikovermittlung. Zeitschrift für Allgemeinmedizin, 99(5), 233-234.