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. We explores our other areas of focus through 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.

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

We wanted to examine differences in emotional responses when telling emotional stories to people from different cultures and in different languages. Substantial cultural differences between these two language groups can influence how people process and express emotions. To investigate this, we conducted a content analysis using the most prevalent everyday emotions identified in the literature.

We investigated whether Chinese international students 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 is whether the distancing effect of a foreign language could reduce the strength of unwanted negative emotions in people’s past memories.