Speaker: 紀麗君 教授, Queen's University

Time: 2:30pm-4:30pm, 3 November, 2019

Venue: 1113，Wangkezhen Bluiding, Peking University

Abstract: Past research in culture and cognition has shown cultural differences in thinking styles. In particular, North Americans tend to think more analytically, focusing on the focal object in isolation from the context, whereas East Asians tend to think more holistically, attending to the context where an object is located as well as the relationships between objects. Expanding this research to the temporal domain, we have examined whether East Asians’ greater sensitivity to the context would apply to the temporal dimension, where the present is deemed as the focal point and the past/future serve as the context for the present. Consistent with our predictions, we have found that, compared to Euro-Canadians, Chinese participants attend more to the past and future, perceiving the past and future closer to the present and accessing information further into the past and future. Such a broader temporal information focus among Chinese than among Canadians has wide implications in various contexts. I will discuss some of them, such as self-continuity, affective forecasting, and stock decisions.

Bio: 紀麗君，畢業于beat365心理學系，取得學士，碩士學位。又于美國密西根大學心理學系取得博士學位. 現任加拿大 Queen’s University 終身教授， 博導, 曾任社會及人格心理學專業主任。 她的主要研究領域是文化心理學，側重文化對認知以及決策的影響。在Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP), Psychological Science, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Personality and Social Psychological Bulletin (PSPB) 等期刊發表多篇論文。 任行為決策期刊（Journal of Behavioral Decision Making）編委和跨文化心理學期刊（Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology）副主編。

Host: Prof. Yiqun Gan