Social-Personality Division

(1) Culture and cognition -- studying people who have been "multiply enculturated," that is people who have been exposed extensively to more than one cultures. As a result of the exposure, these individuals possess multiple sets of cultural knowledge. Upon activation by situational cues, one set of cultural knowledge becomes more accessible than the other, and guides the individual's cognition and behavior. (2) Social identifications and intergroup relations -- examining how people's implicit theories affect their representations of social groups, which in turn affect how they view their own group memberships vis-a-vis perceptions of outgroups. This might then affect their interactions with outgroup members in real-life contexts. (3) Achievement motivation -- identifying the social-oriented learning motivation, a high endorsement of which is associated with greater effort expenditure and better performance, but greater anxiety and guilt feeling when met with setbacks.

Representative Publications:

• Wong, R. Y-M., & Hong, Y. (2005). Dynamic Influences of Culture on Cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilemma. Psychological Science, 16, 429-434.
• Hong, Y., Coleman, J., Chan, G., Wong, R. Y. M., Chiu, C., Hansen, I. G., Lee, S., Tong, Y., & Fu, H. (2004). Predicting intergroup bias: The interactive effects of implicit theory and social identity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1035-1047.
• Hong, Y., Chan, G., Chiu, C., Wong, R. Y. M., Hansen, I. G., Lee, S., Tong, Y., & Fu, H. (2003). How are social identities linked to self-conception and intergroup orientation? The moderating effect of implicit theories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 1147-1160.
• Hong, Y., Morris, M. W., Chiu, C., & Benet-Martinez, V. (2000). Multicultural minds: A dynamic constructivist approach to culture and cognition. American Psychologist, 55, 709-720.

Classes Recently Taught:

• Psychology of Personality, Graduate Seminars in Cultural Psychology, Psychology of Social Identification and Intergroup Relations, Cultural & Psychology