Cross-cultural Research

What is Cross-Cultural Psychology?

Cross-Cultural Psychology investigates how culture influences human behavior, cognition, and emotion. Our research compares psychological processes across different cultural contexts. The Caldwell-Harris Lab frequently explores our other areas of focus–such as Psycholinguistics and Neurodiversity–though a cross-cultural lens.

Our research:

Below are summaries of some of the lab’s past cross-cultural projects. For a list of selected cross-cultural studies, visit the Publications page.  Our ongoing cross-cultural research is available under the Current Research Projects tab.

Bilingualism and cross cultural psych

This project focused on learning about the differences in language learning based on contributing environmental factors such as cultural practices, age, gender, etc.

Religion & Science in Turkey

Historical events like the Sivas massacre (1993) or the religious nature of the current ruling party of Turkey that abolished the Theory of Evolution from the national curriculum (2012) motivates one to extrapolate the impact of secularism practiced in Turkey. It becomes essential to understand the status of religious and scientific belief among young adults in Turkey.

Emotional Stories Project

Our team was interested in examining the differences in emotional responses when telling emotional stories, for people from different cultures, using different languages. The substantial cultural differences between these two language groups can influence how one processes and expresses emotions. To investigate, content analysis was conducted using the most prevalent everyday emotions based on literature.

We investigated whether Chinese international students will have a stronger emotional response to reading, watching, and telling their own emotional stories in their native language than in their foreign language. A clinical implication concerns whether or not the distancing effect of a foreign language could be used to reduce the strength of unwanted negative emotions in people’s past memories.