Culture & Immigrant Health

As a result of migration, 1 out of 10 adults and 1 out of 5 children in the US are immigrants or live in immigrant families.  Unique stressors related to the healthy adaptation of immigrants include negotiating multiple social identities and cultural practices, experiencing racial discrimination, and navigating family cultural conflict.  For example, competing cultural practices and values may be related to increased stress and mental health problems among immigrant Asians.  In my research, I take a social psychological approach to understand cultural influences on social identity, thinking, and feeling among immigrants.

Culture, Cognition & Emotion

I am also interested in the influence of culture on how emotions are represented and expressed. For example, is feeling good the emotional goal for everyone? Do people's faces reveal their inner feelings universally? Many of us assume that everyone wants to be happy and that a smile on a face signals inner happiness. However, my research comparing European Americans, Chinese, and Japanese highlights some surprising diversity in basic emotion processes.  For example, it seems that Chinese and Japanese may be more likely to report feeling both pleasant and unpleasant emotions in positive situations.  Cultural differences may reflect Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian practices that guard against “feeling too happy.”