Monday, January 30, 2006

My research interests entail cognitive and motivational mental processes underlying attitudes and social cognition in a cultural context. This work has been conducted in an attempt to illuminate the consequences of different attributions about one’s thought processes in the area of person perception, the culturally specific meanings of action/inaction and the mechanisms that underpin the effects of thinking and expression in learning associated with these beliefs. Methodologically, I am utilizing experimental methodologies, and also receiving training in the field of social neuroscience to understand the relationship between brain function, attitudes and behaviors in human social contexts. In the long term, my interests in exploring these research domains may contribute to formulate a map for understanding how human feel, think, and behave in social situations.

Intuition and Reasoning in Impression Formation and Change

My master’s research examined the extent to which perceived thought processes affect the formation and change of person impressions. Specifically, I investigated how perceiving that one’s thought processes are intuitive or rational influences the valence, strength, and confidence of the resulting judgments and the change of these judgments in the face of contradictory information. Whereas reasoned judgments are based on an explicit consideration of the factors leading to the judgment, judgments based on intuition are associated with unawareness of the reasons underlying the judgment. As a result, perceiving one’s judgment is based on intuition decreases attempts to counterargue reasons and thus increases its resistance. In contrast, perceiving one’s judgment is based on reasoning increases attempts to counterargue reasons and thus decreases its resistance. Two experiments using individual measures of cognitive style as well as manipulations of the perception of intuition confirmed these hypotheses. In Experiment 1, participants received bogus feedback of the possible thought processes underlying their initial negative impressions of the target person, and then they received additional information about the target. In the presence of distraction, an initial negative impression associated with perceived intuition lasted more than an initial negative impression associated with perceived reasoning. In contrast, in the absence of distraction, the initial negative impression changed regardless of the type of perceived thought process. In Experiment 2, the first set of information about the target was positive and the second negative, and no distraction was included. Findings replicated those of the distraction conditions of Experiment 1. That is, participants who perceived their initial impression as intuitive maintained that impression more than participants who perceived their initial impression as reasoned.

In the near future, I am planning to do research on intuition across cultures, investigating the mechanisms by which people with different cultural background (Eastern vs. Western) use intuitive cues to make inference about other people with whom they interact in multicultural situations. In particular, I am interested in determining whether people are more likely to use reasoning when they meet people from cultures that are unfamiliar to them but intuition when they meet people from their own culture. In addition, I would like to see if Easterners, who place greater value in intuition, have even more resistant intuition-based impressions than Westerners, who value intuition less. Such differences may have important consequences for interactions in various social and work settings in the US and other places of the globe. 

Cultural Differences in Action/inaction Goal Orientations and Beliefs on Thinking

In addition to my master’s research, I am working on an independent project examining whether cultural differences in thinking/verbal expression and understanding are triggered by general goals to act or to remove resources from action. Because Chinese individuals exhibit better problem solving when they think quietly about a problem, thinking silently may be activated following primes with words like “go,” or “energy” whenever people are asked to learn new material. In contrast, Americans and other Westerners value overt discussion of problems. Thus, the same primes should make discussion tendencies more apparent when US participants are asked to learn new material. Moreover, the data from a questionnaire study showed that, individualistic people value action more than collectivistic people; however, collectivistic people hold the belief that thinking is useful to a greater extent than individualistic people. I hope that understanding the goals that trigger the emergence of culturally bound behaviors will provide a better understanding of the functioning of motivation across cultures.