A Starting Grant is a personal grant of about €1.5 million and provides research support to talented researchers for a period of five years.

Thomas Buser (Amsterdam School of Economics): Competition, Time Pressure, Public Speaking and Multitasking: The Role of Willingness and Ability to Cope with Pressure in Explaining Individual Differences and Inequality in Career Outcomes
Thomas Buser studies how personality shapes educational decisions and career paths, and how, in turn, personality is shaped by the environment. In his project, he will focus on the willingness and ability to perform in competitive environments, to work under time pressure, to speak in public and to multitask. His aim is to better understand how individuals sort into different careers and to explain differences across population groups. Ultimately, the results might help to identify characteristics of professional and educational environments which repel otherwise qualified individuals, thereby reducing both productivity and diversity. Examples include high-stakes exams that reward ability to work under time pressure rather than actual knowledge or work environments which reward competitiveness rather than teamwork.