Ivy Yee-Man Lau

Bio: Ivy Yee-Man Lau is an academic researcher from Singapore Management University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Cultural diversity & Social cognition. The author has an hindex of 8, co-authored 15 publications receiving 648 citations. Previous affiliations of Ivy Yee-Man Lau include University of Hong Kong.

Culture as common sense: perceived consensus versus personal beliefs as mechanisms of cultural influence.

Abstract: The authors propose that culture affects people through their perceptions of what is consensually believed. Whereas past research has examined whether cultural differences in social judgment are mediated by differences in individuals' personal values and beliefs, this article investigates whether they are mediated by differences in individuals' perceptions of the views of people around them. The authors propose that individuals who perceive that traditional views are culturally consensual (e.g., Chinese participants who believe that most of their fellows hold collectivistic values) will themselves behave and think in culturally typical ways. Four studies of previously well-established cultural differences found that cultural differences were mediated by participants' perceived consensus as much as by participants' personal views. This held true for cultural differences in the bases of compliance (Study 1), attributional foci (Study 2), and counterfactual thinking styles (Study 3). To tease apart the effect of consensus perception from other possibly associated individual differences, in Study 4, the authors experimentally manipulated which of 2 cultures was salient to bicultural participants and found that judgments were guided by participants' perception of the consensual view of the salient culture.

Perceived cultural importance and actual self-importance of values in cultural identification.

Abstract: Cross-cultural psychologists assume that core cultural values define to a large extent what a culture is. Typically, core values are identified through an actual self-importance approach, in which core values are those that members of the culture as a group strongly endorse. In this article, the authors propose a perceived cultural importance approach to identifying core values, in which core values are values that members of the culture as a group generally believe to be important in the culture. In 5 studies, the authors examine the utility of the perceived cultural importance approach. Results consistently showed that, compared with values of high actual self-importance, values of high perceived cultural importance play a more important role in cultural identification. These findings have important implications for conceptualizing and measuring cultures.

The Linguistic Relativity of Person Cognition: An English-Chinese Comparison

Abstract: We performed an experiment to test the possibility that distinct languages (in this case, English and Chinese) are capable of exerting language-specific effects on people's impressions of and memory for other individuals. Parallel English- and Chinese-language descriptions were created of two characters exemplifying personality schemas with economical labels in English but not in Chinese, and two characters exemplifying personality schemas with economical labels in Chinese but not in English. Three groups of subjects participated in the experiment: English monolingual^ Chinese-English bilinguals who read and responded in English, and Chinese-English bilinguals who read and responded in Chinese. We predicted that subjects processing the target descriptions in English would show greater evidence of schematic thinking in the case of the two characters representing Englishlabeled schemas, whereas subjects processing the target descriptions in Chinese would show greater evidence of schematic thinking in the case of the two characters representing Chinese-labeled schemas. This prediction was confirmed. Both impressions and memory were affected when the target's personality and behavior conformed to a labeled schema in the subject's language of processing. The results are discussed in relation to current social psychological conceptions of schematic processing and in relation to the Whorfian hypothesis of linguistic relativity. The idea that the particular language one speaks importantly affects the manner in which one perceives and thinks about the world—the linguistic relativity hypothesis—has a long but somewhat checkered history within the disciplines of psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and philosophy. Benjamin Lee Whorf, this century's most influential proponent of the linguistic relativity hypothesis, expressed its central proposition as follows:

Terror management among Chinese: Worldview defence and intergroup bias in resource allocation.

Abstract: Management of terror of death and its subsequent reactions has been held to be universal. However, with only a few exceptions empirical efforts have so far been focused on people from North American and European countries. Would Eastern philosophical traditions render differential management of the terror of death? The present research aimed at testing the generality of terror management in Hong Kong Chinese samples. Across four studies, we found robust and consistent mortality salience effects, which attest to the generality of terror management. As in previous studies, compared to control participants, mortality salient participants displayed a stronger ingroup bias in person evaluation (Studies 1, 3). Additionally, we found a robust mortality salience effect on intergroup bias in resource allocation (Studies 2A, 2B, 3), which has not been examined in previous terror management research.

Human Nature and the Social Order

Abstract: “WHAT can men do, what do they do, and what do they want to do ?”—these are the uestions that Prof. Thorndike seeks to answer in a very comprehensive and elaborate treatise. His undertaking is inspired by the belief that man has the possibility of almost complete control of his fate if only he will be guided by science, and that his failures are attributable to ignorance or folly. The main approach is through biological psychology, but all the social sciences are appealed to and utilized in an effort to deal with the human problem as a whole. The relative immaturity of the sciences dealing with man is continually stressed, but it is claimed that they provide a body of facts and principles which are “far above zero knowledge”, and that even now they are capable of affording valuable guidance in the shaping of public policy. Human Nature and the Social Order By E. L. Thorndike. Pp. xx + 1020. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1940.) 18s. net.

Multicultural minds. A dynamic constructivist approach to culture and cognition.

Abstract: The authors present a new approach to culture and cognition, which focuses on the dynamics through which specific pieces of cultural knowledge (implicit theories) become operative in guiding the construction of meaning from a stimulus. Whether a construct comes to the fore in a perceiver's mind depends on the extent to which the construct is highly accessible (because of recent exposure). In a series of cognitive priming experiments, the authors simulated the experience of bicultural individuals (people who have internalized two cultures) of switching between different cultural frames in response to culturally laden symbols. The authors discuss how this dynamic, constructivist approach illuminates (a) when cultural constructs are potent drivers of behavior and (b) how bicultural individuals may control the cognitive effects of culture.

Relational schemas and the processing of social information.

Abstract: It has long been one of the grand ideas in psychology that people internalize their relationships with significant others, which influences their experience of subsequent relationships and their sense of self. Recent work in social cognition has largely neglected the impact of internally represented interpersonal information, however, with researchers choosing instead to focus on the perception of self and other persons in isolation. After a review of relevant theoretical models, it is proposed that research could profitably examine people's relational schemas, defined as cognitive structures representing regularities in patterns of interpersonal relatedness

Culture and the categorization of emotions.

Abstract: Some writers assume--and others deny--that all human beings distinguish emotions from nonemotions and divide the emotions into happiness, anger, fear, and so on. A review of ethnographic and cross-cultural studies on (a) emotion lexicons, (b) the emotions inferred from facial expressions, and (c) dimensions implicit in comparative judgments of emotions indicated both similarities and differences in how the emotions are categorized in different languages and cultures. Five hypotheses are reviewed: (a) Basic categories of emotion are pancultural, subordinate categories culture specific; (b) emotional focal points are pancultural, boundaries culture specific; (c) emotion categories evolved from a single primitive category of physiological arousal; (d) most emotion categories are culture specific but can be defined by pancultural semantic primitives; and (e) an emotion category is a script with both culture-specific and pancultural components.