Research Interests

I am interested in understanding the relationships between culture and cognition. Specifically, I have been studying how culture (East Asian vs. American) shapes the way people think and behave. Research (including some of my own) has shown that the culture in which we grew up affects the way we perceive, interpret and respond to the world. I am particularly interested in cultural impacts on thinking and reasoning (as broadly defined), and the implications for social cognition. In my research, I have examined cultural differences in attention/perception, categorization, prediction, and judgment and decision making.

Selected Publications

 Miyamoto, Y., & Ji, L.J. (in press). Influencing others fosters analytic cognition, whereas adjusting to others fosters holistic cognition. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Hsieh, A.Y., Tripp, D., Ji, L.J. (2011). The influence of ethnic concordance and discordance on verbal reports and nonverbal behaviors of pain. Pain. 152(9),2016-22

Ji, L.J. (2010). Is Confucian culture forgiving? Learning and Individual Difference, 20(6), 569-570.

Hsieh, A.Y., Tripp, D.,Ji, L.J. & Sullivan, M.J.L. (2010) Comparisons of catastrophizing, pain attitudes, and cold pressor pain experience between Chinese and European Canadian young adults. Journal of Pain. 11(11), 1187-94.

Spina, R., Ji, L.J., Guo, T., Zhang, Z, Li, Y., & Fabrigar, L. (2010) Cultural Differences in the Representativeness Heuristic: Expecting a Correspondence in Magnitude between Cause and Effect. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 36(5), 583-597.

Spina, R., Ji, L.J., Ross, M., Li, Y., & Zhang, Z. (2010) Why best can’t last: Cultural differences in anticipating regression toward the mean.  Asian Journal of Social Psychology. 13, 153-162.

Ji. L.J., Lee, A., & Guo, T. (2010) The thinking styles of Chinese people, in Michael Bond (ed.) The handbook of Chinese Psychology (2nd edition), Oxford University Press, p155-167.

Yates, F.J.,Ji, L.J., Oka, T, Lee, J.W., Shinotsuka, H., & Sieck, W. (2010) Indecisiveness and culture: Incidence, values, and thoroughness. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 41(3), 428-444.

Ji, L.J., Guo, T., Zhang, Z.,& Messervey, D. (2009) Looking into the past: Cultural differences in  perception and representation of past information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(4), 761-769.

Ji, L.J. (2008) The leopard cannot change his spots, or can he: Culture and the development of lay theories of change. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(5), 613-622.

Ji, L.J., Zhang, Z., & Guo, T. (2008) To buy or to sell: Cultural differences in stock market decisions based on stock price trends. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 21(4), 399-413.

Ji, L.J. (2005). Culture and lay theories of change. In Culture and Social Behavior: The Tenth Ontario Symposium. Edited by Richard M. Sorrentino, Dov Cohen, Jim Olson, Mark Zanna. Hillsdale, NJ:  Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 117 -135.

Messervey, D., Ji, L.J., & Uchida, Y. (2004). Cognition and Culture. In Charles Spielberger (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology. San Diego, CA: Elsevier Ltd., 357-364.

Ji, L.J., Zhang, Z., & Nisbett, R.E. (2004) Is it Culture, or is it language? Examination of language effects in cross-cultural research on categorization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(1), 57-65.

Ji, L.J., Zhang, Z., Usborne, E., & Guan, Y. (2004). Optimism across cultures: In response to the SARS outbreak. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 7(1), 25-34.

Haberstroh, S., Oyserman, D., Schwarz, N., Kuhnen, U., & Ji, L.J. (2002) Is the interdependent self more sensitive to question context than the independent self? Self-construal and the observation of conversational norms. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 323-329.

Hedden, T., Park, D., Nisbett, R.E.,Ji, L.J., Jing, Q., & Jiao, S. (2002) Cultural variation in verbal versus spatial neuropsychological function across the lifespan. Neuropsychology, 16, 65-73.

Ji, L.J., Nisbett, R.E., & Su, Y. (2001) Culture, change, and prediction. Psychological Science. 12 (6), 450-456. [Also available at http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/ps/index.html]

Ji, L.J., Peng, K., & Nisbett, R.E. (2000) Culture, control and perception of relationships in the environment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 78 (5), 943-955.

Ji, L.J., Schwarz, N., & Nisbett, R. E. (2000) Culture, autobiographical memory, and social comparison: Measurement issues in cross-cultural studies. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 26 (5), 586-594.

Ji, L.J. (1995). Social (interpersonal) comparison, Psychological Development (China), 3(2), 43-48.

Ji, L.J. (1993). Research on lay theories and its clinical applications. Chinese Journal of Clinical Psychology, 1(2), 123-126.

Ji, L.J. (1993). Research on writing and graphology, Psychological Development (China), 1(1), 42-48.