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6118 ISR
426 Thompson Street
Phone: 734-936-2137

Throughout my career as a psychologist, I have investigated the role of culture in modifying,
shaping, and even sometimes forming a variety of psychological processes including cognition,
emotion, and motivation. In this work, the independence/interdependence theory of culture and
self has been instrumental both as a heuristic device for generating new hypotheses and as an
overarching theoretical frame within which to integrate diverse empirical findings. In more
recent work, I have tried to expand this work by 1) looking specifically at origins of cultural
variations, 2) expanding data base to non-student adult populations, and 3) beginning to explore
underlying brain processes. I am hopeful that by pursuing these avenues of research, it will be
possible to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of how culture and the human mind influence
each other, and how culture influences the mind in such a way that culture becomes an integral
element of the mind itself. I believe that this work has the potential of overcoming the traditional
dichotomy between culture and nature a dichotomy that has plagued the field of social and behavioral
sciences for a long time.
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