Alina Tausch

The Chair of Personnel and Organisational Psychology is dedicated to the human-centred design of work in organisations. It does this by looking at three levels: 1) that of employees, their experience at work, health and development, 2) that of teams, their social structures, interactions and dynamics and 3) that of the organisation, which shapes aspects such as leadership, task allocation or organisational development as a connecting element.

The focus is on the design of collaboration between people and technology. This includes cobots, for example, but also artificial intelligence systems for various areas of application. Here, we examine the roles that people and technologies can play, how collaboration can be designed to be, remain or become conducive to learning, and how we can use technological potential such as AI-based personalisation to create good living and working conditions for people.

Dr Alina Tausch investigates the interaction of people with a wide range of new technologies. Starting with projects in the field of human-robot collaboration in industry and the health care system, she is now increasingly focussing on artificial intelligence and its application. Here, for example, she looks at the use of large language models by students, AI as a partner in the control process for technical testing processes or as a sparring partner to support healthcare provision. She generally works on an interdisciplinary basis with experts from the fields of engineering, business informatics and mathematics - because the challenges of tomorrow's working world can only be overcome together.

Exemplary questions that she investigates:

• Are stressed students more likely to use ChatGPT for homework? And to what extent do the importance of the task and the conviction of one's own abilities influence this?
• Does AI-based personalisation of communication with a symptom checker app lead to more efficient support for health behaviour? (funded by the RC Trust)
• Are mathematical proofs for AI algorithms really trust-promoting cues?

• Do people prefer an automatically adapting robot or do they want to be able to make adjustments themselves?

   

Since April 2025
Substitute for the Chair of Personnel and Organisational Psychology at Witten/Herdecke University

2021 - 2025
Postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Work, Organisational and Business Psychology at Ruhr University Bochum

2021
Doctoral studies at the Faculty of Psychology at Ruhr University Bochum with the title "Task allocation in human-robot interaction - A psychological consideration of task allocation processes for the design of human-centred cooperation between humans and robots"

2017 - 2021
Research assistant in the "Products and Work Systems" department of the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

2016 - 2017
Research assistant at the Chair of Work, Organisational and Business Psychology at Ruhr University Bochum

2011 - 2017
Bachelor's and Master's degree in Business Psychology at the Ruhr University Bochum

Research and practical application must go hand in hand and make learning effective when working on analysing and solving practical problems. Alina Tausch mentors students on the Management & Psychology degree programme and supports their learning process.

She is enthusiastic about introducing students in small groups to the entire breadth of psychology, starting with the basics of understanding personality and social interaction. In this way, they can gradually build up the knowledge about the fields of application of psychology in organisations that they need for a human-centred attitude in their future career and for understanding the complex interplay of people, technologies and organisations.

Current and upcoming courses:

• Psychological diagnostics and assessment - basics (SS)
• General Psychology (WS)
• Work and organisational psychology (WS)
• Personality Psychology (WS)
• Health Psychology (WS)

• Intercultural Psychology (WS)

   

• Collaboration with AI and robotics
• Human-centred work design

• Task allocation

   

Memberships:

• Society for Industrial Science

• German Society for Psychology (specialist groups for engineering psychology and work and organisational psychology)