Kathi Diel

Dr. Kathi Diel serves as an Akademische Rätin (Academic Councilor) at Saarland University, holding a tenured faculty position equivalent to Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology within the Faculty of Social Sciences. Her research profile demonstrates active engagement in both theoretical and applied psychological research with international collaborations spanning multiple continents.

Dr. Diel's research focuses primarily on social comparison processes and their motivational consequences, with particular emphasis on how comparison direction (upward vs. downward) and extremity (moderate vs. extreme standards) influence goal pursuit behaviors. Her work reveals that upward comparisons enhance self-improvement motivation when standards are moderate and attainable, but lead to goal disengagement when standards are extreme. She has developed a comprehensive motivational framework that identifies three key response patterns to social comparisons: pushing (increased effort), coasting (reduced effort), and disengagement (giving up).

More recently, Dr. Diel has expanded her research to environmental psychology, investigating how social comparison dynamics affect climate action behaviors. Her work reveals that people often engage in downward comparisons regarding environmental behavior to maintain positive moral self-images, which can lead to reduced effort in climate action (coasting). She explores interventions that might shift people toward more motivating upward comparisons in environmental contexts.

Her publication record shows consistent high-impact output with numerous articles in top psychology journals including Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and Journal of Environmental Psychology. Her recent work has increasingly focused on large-scale international collaborations, most notably the International Climate Psychology Collaboration spanning 63 countries, demonstrating her growing influence in global environmental psychology research.

Dr. Diel collaborates extensively with prominent researchers including Wilhelm Hofmann, Martina Friese, and the international team behind the global climate intervention studies. Her research methodology combines experimental laboratory studies with real-world intervention approaches, demonstrating both theoretical rigor and practical application.

Her work bridges fundamental social psychology with pressing contemporary issues, particularly climate change behavior. By applying social comparison theory to environmental contexts, she has created a novel research trajectory that addresses how people's perceptions of others' environmental behaviors influence their own climate action efforts.