Collaborators from Understanding China's Changing Moral Psychology
as authored by Ryan Nichols, in alphabetical order
Dr. Michael Harris Bond 彭邁克
Visiting Chair Professor, Department of Management & Marketing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Professor Bond is a cross-cultural social psychologist whose career has focused on locating Chinese interpersonal processes in a multi-cultural space. Few psychologists have been more influential in either contributing to an understanding of Chinese psychology or integrating its many subfields. Working with hundreds of collaborators across many countries over the last 40 years, he has written over 250 articles, edited The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Psychology (2010) and co-authored Understanding social psychology across cultures (2013). Among his far-reaching papers is “The social psychology of Chinese people” (1986), with K. K. Hwang now cited over 2400 times. In this project, Dr. Bond will author an article reviewing cross-cultural variation in moral psychology within Confucian Heritage Cultures.
Dr. Emma Buchtel 蒲安梅
Department of Psychology, The Education University of Hong Kong
Professor Buchtel is a social and moral psychologist with interests in the nature of moral motivation across cultures and culture’s effects on motivation, morality, and values, with a focus on improving cross-cultural understanding. Specific research foci include cultural differences in the value of extrinsic motivation; the definition of morality; cultural-moral relativism; and the effects of teaching about cultural differences. Among Dr. Buchtel’s most esteemed papers are “A Sense of Obligation: Cultural Differences in the Experience of Obligation” (2018) and “Immorality East and West: Are immoral behaviors especially harmful, or especially uncivilized?” (2015). In the latter, Dr. Buchtel unearths, then extensively probes, a fascinating conundrum facing psychologists interested in the study of Chinese moral psychology in a cross-cultural context. As a collaborator on this project, Dr. Buchtel will author an article reviewing social psychological results pertinent to Chinese morality.
Dr. Takeshi Hamamura
School of Psychology and Speech Pathology, Curtin University
The heart of Dr. Hamamura’s research is cultural psychology and from there extends to the study of culture’s influence on self, motivation, group process, and cultural change. His research stands out for its remarkably diverse set of outcome and predictor variables, which include psychological scales, mathematical abilities, pronoun use, pathogen load, and physical pain. Among Dr. Hamamura’s most important papers are “In Search of East Asian self-enhancement” (2007) and “Are cultures becoming individualistic? A cross-temporal comparison of individualism-collectivism in the United States and Japan” (2012). As a collaborator on this project, Dr. Hamamura will author an article reviewing the roles of the ancestral and present-day physical ecologies in East Asia in understanding Chinese morality.
Dr. Shihui Han 韩世辉
Distinguish Professor, School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University
PI, PKU-IDF/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University
Director, Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory
As a pioneer in the now burgeoning field of cultural neuroscience, Dr. Han and his laboratory have been responsible for an uninterrupted sequence of standout findings in brain function. E.g., he discovered activations from self-processing tasks in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex differ between Chinese and non-Chinese participants, a remarkable result consonant with extant social psychological work on the cultural self. Dr. Han’s knowing experimental designs are influential in part because of his efforts to integrate results with research across other fields. Among Dr. Han’s many influential papers are “Neural basis of cultural influence on self-representation” (2007) and “A cultural neuroscience approach to the biosocial nature of the human brain” (2013). Dr. Han founded and edits Culture and Brain. As a collaborator on this project, Dr. Han will author an article reviewing cultural neuroscience results relevant to Chinese moral psychology.
Dr. JOHN W. HEAD
Robert W. Wagstaff Distinguished Professor, School of Law, University of Kansas
Dr. Head’s scholarly works focus mainly on international and comparative law, with emphasis on the legal aspects of international business, international environmental protection and international economic relations. He has also authored or co-authored several books on Chinese law. His current research projects revolve around international agricultural law and policy.
Dr. Yiming Jing 敬一鸣
Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Dr. Jing’s research expertise covers areas including cultural models of leadership, well-being, and social trust. Forthcoming publications breaks new ground in the study of social trust by examining trust across many countries and across provinces of China in relation to cultural, ecological, and relationship factors. Among influential publications are “Culture matters: The looks of a leader are not all the same” (2016) and “Sources for trusting most people: How national goals for socializing children promote the contributions made by trust of the in-group and the out-group to non-specific trust” (2015). As a collaborator on this project, Dr. Jing will author an article reviewing work on the measurement of and metrics for morality in East Asia.
Dr. Perry Link 林培瑞
Chancellorial Chair for Innovation in Teaching Across Disciplines, University of California, Riverside
Distinguished Professor, Comparative Literature and Languages, University of California, Riverside
Dr. Link’s research, writing, and translations together focus on understanding present-day China in terms of both its recent history and its language. His work spans fields of modern Chinese literature and language, popular culture and intellectual history, art and politics. As a senior statesman about contemporary Chinese culture, his editorials have been widely reproduced in major American newspapers, and Dr. Link’s co-translation of the Tiananmen Papers (2001) has been especially influential. Among Dr. Link’s other noteworthy works are an edited collection Restless China (2013), about how Chinese people are coping with transformative change, and a monograph An Anatomy of Chinese: Rhythm, Metaphor, Politics (2013), broadly about interactions old and new between language, politics, psychology and culture in China. As a collaborator on this project, Dr. Link will author an article reviewing work on the language of morality in contemporary China.
Dr. Vivian Lun 倫妙芝
Department of Psychology, Lingnan University
Dr. Lun is an expert on use of Hierarchical Linear Modeling to study results from the World Values Survey. This means she arguably uses the best tool to investigate the world’s most cross-culturally complete, longitudinally robust dataset pertaining to moral psychology. Among recent noteworthy papers are “Exploring cultural differences in critical thinking: Is it about my thinking style or the language I speak?” (2010), and “Examining the relation of religion and spirituality to subjective well-being across national cultures” (2013). As a collaborator on this project, Dr. Lun will author an article reviewing research investigating the nature and causes of well-being across Confucian Heritage Cultures.
Dr. Edward Slingerland 森舸瀾
Canada Research Chair and Distinguished University Scholar
Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia
Director, Database of Religious History
Dr. Slingerland, an interdisciplinary researcher par excellence, has made influential, first-rate contributions to fields of Religion, Asian Studies, and Cognitive Science, often in ways that have had significant methodological repercussions. Important books include What Science Offers the Humanities (2008), Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China (2003), and Creating Consilience: Integrating the Sciences and the Humanities (2012), not to mention his translation of Confucius’ Analects (2003), while among his critical papers are “The Cultural Evolution of Prosocial Religions” (2016) and “‘Of What Use Are the Odes?’ Cognitive Science, Virtue Ethics, and Early Confucian Ethics” (2011). As a collaborator on this project, Dr. Slingerland will author an article reviewing features of ancient Chinese thought that anticipate (and that do not anticipate) current trends in contemporary Chinese morality and moral psychology.
Dr. Yanjie Su 苏彦捷
School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences and Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University
Dr. Su’s research interests focus on evolution and development, particularly the emergence and development of theory of mind, and the relationship between social behavior, social cognition and executive control. She has studied behavior and comparative cognition in a variety of species of birds and primates, as well as children. Among her important publications are “Culture, Change, and Prediction” (2001), “The reconciliation behavior of golden monkeys (Rhinopithecus roxellanae roxellanae) in small breeding groups” (1991), and “The association between oxytocin receptor gene polymorphism (OXTR) and trait empathy” (2012). As a collaborator on this project, Dr. Su will author an article reviewing genetic contributions to Chinese and East Asian moral psychology and behavior.
Dr. Anna Sun
Department of Sociology, Kenyon College
Co-Chair, Chinese Religions Group, American Academy of Religion
Vice President, Society for the Study of Chinese Religions
Dr. Sun is a leading researcher on religion in contemporary China and has contributed to this field with groundbreaking theoretical and empirical work. Dr. Sun’s book Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities has the distinction of winning book awards from the major national academic societies of both Religion and Sociology. Other essential works by Dr. Sun include “The Study of Chinese Religion in the Social Sciences: Beyond the Monotheistic Assumption” (2017) and “A Sociological Consideration of Prayer and Agency” (2016). As a collaborator on this project, Dr. Sun will author an article reviewing the relationships between multiple contemporary Chinese religions and present-day morality.
Dr. Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Chancellor’s Professor, Department of History, University of California, Irvine
As a specialist in modern Chinese history, Dr. Wasserstrom has sought to place an understanding of China’s present with an appreciation of its past. His body of work has perhaps done more to communicate to English-reading audiences the pace of change in China and its effects on people’s lives than anyone else’s. Important representative books include China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (2018), translated into many languages, China's Brave New World--And Other Tales for Global Times (2007), and Global Shanghai, 1850-2010 (2009). His work is noted for its reach and influence within and outside the walls of academia. As a collaborator on this project, Dr. Wasserstrom will author an article reviewing the origination and influence of moral norms in post-PRC China.
Jing Xu 许晶
Department of Anthropology, University of Washington
Dr. Xu is an interdisciplinary social scientist who uses experimental and observational methods in pursuit of a better understanding of moral and social cognition and development in children. Among those inclined to think that China is undergoing a moral transformation, even crisis, Xu’s work has found a large following in part because she has thoroughly contextualized Chinese youngsters’ moral development, framed the struggle between self-interest and altruism in the context of early socialization, and captured the multi-player contest of the Chinese classroom like no one else. Among her most important work is The Good Child: Moral Development in a Chinese Preschool (2017), "Becoming a Moral Child amidst China's Moral Crisis: Preschool Discourse and Practices of Sharing in Shanghai" (2014), and “Experience Facilitates the Emergence of Sharing Behavior among 7.5 Month-Old Infants.” (2016).
Yan Yunxiang 阎云翔
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles
Dr. Yan’s research into contemporary Chinese life has, for many years, subtlety drawn out moral challenges and choices facing people today. Rather than stopping there, his contextual research methods consistently lead to captivating discoveries about the social and personal origins of these challenges. Among his publications stand “The Good Samaritan’s New Trouble: A Study of the Changing Moral Landscape in Contemporary China” (2009) and a book entitled “Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949-1999” (2003). As a collaborator on this project, Dr. Yan will author an article reviewing moral change in China from an anthropological perspective.
Dr. Zhu Liqi 朱莉琪
Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Dr. Zhu’s developmental psychological research has contributed to the understanding of a set of momentous differences in cross-cultural cognition and social behavior. She and her laboratory have clarified differences in the development of theory of mind, abilities to correctly attribute a false belief, free will beliefs, childrens’ altruism, language acquisition, and the development of moral values. Publications worth highlighting include “Psychological traces of China's socio-economic reforms in the ultimatum and dictator games” (2013), “Is the bias for function-based explanations culturally universal? Children from China endorse teleological explanations of natural phenomena” (2017) and “How do children coordinate information about mental states with social norms?” (2011). As a collaborator on this project, Dr. Zhu will author an article reviewing work in developmental psychology about the sources of moral cognition in Chinese children in cross-cultural context.