Peter Steiglechner has been a postdoctoral researcher focusing on belief systems since November 2024. Belief systems describe how individuals organize and make sense of their (political) beliefs and opinions. He approaches belief systems as networks, where nodes represent belief dimensions, such as support for social security policies or concern about climate change, and links represent the relationships between these dimensions. For instance, for many people, concern about climate change is related to support for more social security. However, belief systems can vary across society and evolve quite differently over time.

Together with the Collective Minds group at CSH, Peter uses empirical data from surveys or social media to explore variations in belief systems. Through agent-based modeling, he aims to understand how these differences and their evolution might affect social cohesion, perceptions of polarization, and our (in)ability to deal effectively with current political and social challenges.

Previously, Peter studied physics, scientific computing, and applied mathematics. Although he initially saw his contribution to science in climate modeling—addressing this existential crisis from the natural science perspective—his interest soon shifted to what he now sees as the crux of this challenge: our struggle to reach consensus on an appropriate collective response to climate change. This led him to pursue a PhD on models of opinion formation, taking into account social influence and the impact of distorted social perceptions, for example, due to social and cognitive biases.