Author
Letty Y.-Y. Kwan
Other affiliations: University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Sun Yat-sen University, Nanyang Technological University
Bio: Letty Y.-Y. Kwan is an academic researcher from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The author has contributed to research in topics: Creativity & Psychology. The author has an hindex of 10, co-authored 22 publications receiving 586 citations. Previous affiliations of Letty Y.-Y. Kwan include University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign & Sun Yat-sen University.
Topics: Creativity, Psychology, Cultural globalization, Globalization, Mindset
Papers
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TL;DR: The results suggest that traditional East Asian art has predominantly context-inclusive styles, whereas Western art has mainly object-focused styles, and contemporary members of East Asian and Western cultures maintain these culturally shaped aesthetic orientations.
Abstract: Prior research indicates that East Asians are more sensitive to contextual information than Westerners. This article explored aesthetics to examine whether cultural variations were observable in art and photography. Study 1 analyzed traditional artistic styles using archival data in representative museums. Study 2 investigated how contemporary East Asians and Westerners draw landscape pictures and take portrait photographs. Study 3 further investigated aesthetic preferences for portrait photographs. The results suggest that (a) traditional East Asian art has predominantly context-inclusive styles, whereas Western art has predominantly object-focused styles, and (b) contemporary members of East Asian and Western cultures maintain these culturally shaped aesthetic orientations. The findings can be explained by the relation among attention, cultural resources, and aesthetic preference.
232 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined both the concurrent and predictive associations of the interactive effects of human capital and institutional support with innovation output, and found that innovation output is a multi-faceted construct consisting of at least three aspects: knowledge creation, knowledge impact, and knowledge diffusion.
Abstract: Summary
Innovation is of pivotal importance to economic growth in both developed and developing countries. The current research seeks to provide insights on how human and institutional factors interact to explain country variations in innovation. Using a multiple source, multinational database that covers a wide spectrum of innovation outputs in more than 120 economies in the world from 2011 to 2013, we for the first time examined both the concurrent and predictive associations of the interactive effects of human capital and institutional support with innovation output. Results showed that innovation output is a multi-faceted construct, consisting of at least three aspects: knowledge creation, knowledge impact, and knowledge diffusion. Quality of human capital predicts knowledge creation; institutional support and human capital have additive effects on knowledge impact; and the presence of both human capital and institutional support is required for knowledge diffusion. These results extend past findings on the role of institutions and human capital in innovation and have important implications for national policies of innovation development. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
94 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors proposed two interpretational mindsets that attenuate (transactional mindset) and agitate (categorization mindset) these culturally motivated responses, and concluded that while economic activities such as cross-border acquisitions can inadvertently evoke nationalistic reactions, it is possible to mitigate them or even encourage rational evaluations by influencing people's interpretational mindset.
Abstract: Cross-border transactions are often perceived by the general public as national threats instead of rational business deals. We propose two interpretational mindsets that attenuate (transactional mindset) and agitate (categorization mindset) these culturally motivated responses. Three studies were conducted in Singapore and the United States with various cross-border acquisition scenarios. As predicted, transactional mindset, which centers around cost–benefit calculations, nudged participants to evaluate the foreign acquisition more rationally and evoked fewer social–cultural considerations than categorization mindset, which focuses on categorizing and comparison procedures, and when no mindset was primed. Furthermore, the effects of categorization mindset are particularly strong when one perceives the two transacting parties as dissimilar and when he/she identifies closely with the local culture. We conclude that while economic activities such as cross-border acquisitions can inadvertently evoke nationalistic reactions, it is possible to mitigate them or even encourage rational evaluations by influencing people's interpretational mindset.
50 citations
TL;DR: This article found that mere exposure to stimulus objects alters people's assumed familiarity to others, without conscious processing, and that this mere exposure effect affected personal preference only when there was a strong motivation for social connectedness.
50 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, authors of nine articles jointly contribute to a nuanced and systematical inquiry into the cultural and social process of creativity and innovation in the arts and sciences. But they do not discuss the role of technology in this process.
Abstract: This special issue enriches the study of creativity and innovation as a cultural and social process. Authors of nine articles jointly contribute to a nuanced and systematical inquiry into the cultu...
38 citations
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01 Jan 2008
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them, and describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative.
Abstract: What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.
2,134 citations
TL;DR: The authors present seven principles that have guided our thinking about emotional intelligence, some of them new, and reformulated our original ability model here guided by these principles, and present a new ability model based on these principles.
Abstract: This article presents seven principles that have guided our thinking about emotional intelligence, some of them new. We have reformulated our original ability model here guided by these principles,...
642 citations
TL;DR: Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning as discussed by the authors is a seminal work in the study of meaning in the digital world, focusing on the problem of meaning.
Abstract: Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning. Bradd Shore. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. 428 pp.
492 citations
TL;DR: Japanese scenes may encourage perception of the context more than American scenes, and provide evidence that culturally characteristic environments may afford distinctive patterns of perception.
Abstract: Westerners' perceptions tend to focus on salient foreground objects, whereas Asians are more inclined to focus on contexts. We hypothesized that such culturally specific patterns of attention may be afforded by the perceptual environment of each culture. In order to test this hypothesis, we randomly sampled pictures of scenes from small, medium, and large cities in Japan and the United States. Using both subjective and objective measures, Study 1 demonstrated that Japanese scenes were more ambiguous and contained more elements than American scenes. Japanese scenes thus may encourage perception of the context more than American scenes. In Study 2, pictures of locations in cities were presented as primes, and participants' subsequent patterns of attention were measured. Both Japanese and American participants primed with Japanese scenes attended more to contextual information than did those primed with American scenes. These results provide evidence that culturally characteristic environments may afford dis...
400 citations