The Max Planck Institute for Human Development is a multidisciplinary research establishment dedicated to the study of human development and education. Its inquiries are broadly defined, but concentrate on the evolutionary, social, historical, and institutional contexts of human development, as well as examining it from life-span and life-course perspectives. The disciplines of education, psychology, and history reflect the current directors' backgrounds, but the Institute's scholarly spectrum is enriched by the work of colleagues from such fields as behavioral developmental neuroscience, sociology of education, mathematics, economics, computer science, evolutionary biology, and the humanities.
Research into processes of human development is conducted primarily from the theoretical vantage points offered by models of life-span psychology, bounded rationality and adaptive behavior, life-course sociology, and conceptions of social-historical change.

The Institute is one of about 80 research facilities financed by the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e.V.), the core support for which is provided by the Federal Republic of Germany and its 16 states. The total permanent staff at the Institute is 110, including 35 researchers, supplemented by a varying number of predoctoral, postdoctoral, and affiliate researchers and visiting fellows.