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Research
Perspective |
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I have been greatly influenced by my research perspective; I am a
cultural psychologist. Cultural psychology is the study of how
culture influences the way people think and behave.
Within cultural psychology, there is the belief that culture is an
integral, integrated, inextricably linked system of rules, norms and
beliefs that are woven into the very fabric of who you are. Culture
can not be separated from you. You cannot be understood without your
culture. Thus, in order to understand human functioning, we
necessarily must also understand the cultural context in which that
functioning take place. Cultural psychology can be thought of as a
perspective that can be applied to many areas of psychology.
Cultural psychologists study issues in social psychology, cognitive
psychology, developmental psychology, clinical psychology, and many other
areas.
My own research has investigated how
culture can influence the ways in which people think about fairness.
Do people think about fairness in similar ways or are the specific norms
and values within different cultures that may lead to differences in the
conception of fairness.
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Master's
Research |
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I conducted
both my master's and doctoral research in the Philippines. For my
master's research, I compared how children in the Philippines and the US
think about fairness in a hypothetical situation (reasoning) to how they
act in a real-life situation (behavior). First,
third and fifth graders
participated in the
research. Using Damon's theory of positive justice, I found that
children reason about fairness about fairness at a higher developmental
level than they actually behave. This is most likely to be because
of the influence of the norm of self-interest. that is, in real-life
situations, children are more likely to think about their own needs and
desires than they are in hypothetical situations. This research was
supported by SPSSI
Grants-in-Aid.
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Doctoral
Research
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Click for pictures from
Manila
Click for pictures from Bataan
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My dissertation research investigated fairness in the context of the
distribution of resources among adults. Adults from an urban poor
community in Quezon City, Manila were compared to adults in a rural
fishing village in Bataan province. Hypothetical situations were
read to the participants and they were asked to determine how much of a
resource should be divided between a meritorious versus a needy
individual. In the scenarios, the relationship between the allocator
and the resource recipients was varied. In addition, the scarcity of
the resource being divided was also varied.
While no differences were found between the urban
and rural participants, it was found that the relationships between the
allocator and the resource recipients influence how the resource was
divided. In general, resources like food were divided evenly between
friends whereas money among strangers was divided on the basis of
individual need.
This research was supported by a Fulbright
Scholarship and was conducted with support from Ateneo
de Manila University in Quezon City, Manila.
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Post-Doctoral
Research |
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My post-doctoral
work supported by a National
Science Foundation grant comparing of conceptions of
fairness between American and Filipino College and fifth grade
students. During this time I was a Visiting Researcher in the
Department of Psychology at the University
of the Philippines - Diliman and a Visiting Research Associate with
the Institute of Philippine
Culture at Ateneo de Manila University. College student data was
collected from students at both universities, while fifth-grader data was
collected from elementary school associated with the two universities as
well as two other elementary schools. Two of the elementary schools
were private and two were public school. The private schools were
also affiliated with the Catholic Church as is Ateneo de Manila
University.
Fifth graders were read hypothetical
stories describing situations in which one character was meritorious and
the second character was needy. They were then asked to divide a
resource between the characters and describe why they divided the resource
the way that they did.
College students were also given
hypothetical scenarios involving situations such as the distribution of
scholarship funds, distributing an inheritance among family members with
varying needs, or distributing a bonus among variously deserving
workers. In addition to these scenarios, students were asked to
complete an individualism/collectivism scale and two conceptions of
equality scales.
While the
Filipino and American fifth graders both preferred to distribute resources
equally, when their reasoning was evaluated qualitatively, it was found
that the motivations or reasons underlying their distributions
differed. American students were focused on the performance of each
character in the scenario, however, the Filipino fifth graders emphasized
the importance of maintaining the social and friendly relationships
between the characters. In other words, they focused on the
emotional aspects of relationships and recognized that unequal
distributions may serve to disrupt an existing harmonious relationship.
Despite the fact that these clear
differences were found between Filipino and American fifth graders, these
differences seemed to disappear in the college students. Both
American and Filipino college students focused on the performance of the
characters in the scenarios. So in one way, the Filipino college
students sounded more American. This may be due to the strong
American influence in the Filipino educational system. This data
continues to be analyzed. |
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| Current
Research |
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| See pictures
of our most recent presentation of this work at EPA in Philadelphia, PA |
My current research focuses
on the examination of the role of migration and social change on human
behavior. The primary avenue of this research has taken shape in the
investigation of women's body image and body dissatisfaction. How do
culture, ethnic identity, and acculturation influence the way a woman
thinks about her body? Within the last twenty years, eating
disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa were thought to be
limited to young White women from upper SES families. With the
increased attention given to the study of culture, the question of
universality with respect to these disorders began to come under
investigation. Researchers have begun to accumulate data examining
the prevalence of eating pathology among ethnic groups within the US as
well as internationally. While there does seems to be substantial evidence
that White women diet more and have higher body dissatisfaction than
African-American women, research including Asian, Hispanic/Latina and
Native American women is less consistent. A growing number of
researchers, including me, suspect that this between group variation with
regard to body dissatisfaction is related to the specific cultural values
held within each group about eating behaviors, body image, beauty and
gender roles. In addition, within group variation with regard to
ethnic identity and acculturative status is rarely measured.
Measurement of such variation within each ethnic group will elucidate
differences in identification with Western values and ideals as well as
adherence to one's own cultural values. In addition, focus groups
and individual interviews will allow for greater understanding of the
specific cultural values with an ethnic group that influence body image.
More recently, we have begun an investigation of the
role of media on women's body dissatisfaction. For more information on
this research, click here.
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