The successful applicant will be hosted at Ghent University, Department of Developmental, Personality and Social Psychology ( www.vopspsy.ugent.be ), where s/he will work with Alain Van Hiel (UGent), Frank Van Overwalle (VUBrussels, Research Unit of Social Psychology) and David De Cremer (RSM, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, ERASMUS Centre of behavioural ethics). 

Candidates who do not have experience with conducting fMRI studies should certainly show a great interest in acquiring the skills to conduct such studies. At the end of the four-year term, the candidate is expected to have completed his/her PhD thesis. For further information, please contact Alain Van Hiel (alain.vanhiel@UGent.be) or Frank Van Overwalle ( frank.vanoverwalle@vub.ac.be ) Project summary: 
The issue of trust has been on the forefront of research agendas across a variety of disciplines in social sciences, including psychology, management, organizational behavior, and economics. It is, however, noteworthy that only a little number of studies have focused on what happens when trust is violated and has to be restored again. Here, we look more closely at the role of motivation. In particular, we argue that people’s decision to trust others may be motivated by the motive to obtain material and financial resources (i.e., referred to as the calculative perspective of trust), or by the need to obtain relational outcomes such as feeling respected and accepted by the other party (i.e., referred to as the relational perspective of trust). It is examined (1) to what extent trust violation frustrates economic versus relational motives, determining people’s willingness to display trust behavior, (2) to what extent a violator’s efforts to restore trust impacts upon these motives, and (3) which areas in the brain play a role to point out the importance of economic versus relational motives, thereby mapping the neurological basis of trust restoration.