Speaker: 纪丽君 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: 纪丽君，毕业于永利集团心理学系，取得学士，硕士学位。又于美国密西根大学心理学系取得博士学位. 现任加拿大 Queen’s University 终身教授， 博导, 曾任社会及人格心理学专业主任。 她的主要研究领域是文化心理学，侧重文化对认知以及决策的影响。在Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP), Psychological Science, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Personality and Social Psychological Bulletin (PSPB) 等期刊发表多篇论文。 任行为决策期刊（Journal of Behavioral Decision Making）编委和跨文化心理学期刊（Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology）副主编。

Host: Prof. Yiqun Gan

2019-10-30