The Max Planck Institute for Human Development (Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung) is a social science research organization.

Located in Berlin, it was initiated in 1961 and officially began operations in 1963 under the name Institute for Educational Research in the Max Planck Society, before receiving its current name in 1971.

The Centre is dedicated to studying the causes of psychiatric disorders as well as the causes of individual differences in cognitive development, with an emphasis on adulthood and old age.

The centre's research focuses on the vision of the responsible citizen who knows how to deal with the risks of a modern technological world in an informed manner.

They were followed by directors Wolfgang Edelstein (1973), Peter M. Roeder (1973) and Friedrich Edding (director from 1973), Paul B. Baltes (1980), Karl Ulrich Mayer (1983), Jürgen Baumert (1996), Gerd Gigerenzer (1997), Ulman Lindenberger (2003), Ute Frevert (2008), Ralph Hertwig (2012), Iyad Rahwan (2019) and Simone Kühn (2024).