Yubo Hou

Bio: Yubo Hou is an academic researcher from Peking University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Psychology & Autobiographical memory. The author has an hindex of 14, co-authored 26 publications receiving 857 citations.

Dialectical Self-Esteem and East-West Differences in Psychological Well-Being

Abstract: A well-documented finding in the literature is that members of many East Asian cultures report lower self-esteem and psychological well-being than do members of Western cultures. The authors present the results of four studies that examined cultural differences in reasoning about psychological contradiction and the effects of naive dialecticism on self-evaluations and psychological adjustment. Mainland Chinese and Asian Americans exhibited greater "ambivalence" or evaluative contradiction in their self-attitudes than did Western synthesis-oriented cultures on a traditional self-report measure of self-esteem (Study 1) and in their spontaneous self-descriptions (Study 2). Naive dialecticism, as assessed with the Dialectical Self Scale, mediated the observed cultural differences in self-esteem and well-being (Study 3). In Study 4, the authors primed naive dialecticism and found that increased dialecticism was related to decreased psychological adjustment. Implications for the conceptualization and measurement of self-esteem and psychological well-being across cultures are discussed.

Social media addiction: Its impact, mediation, and intervention

Abstract: This research examined the relations of social media addiction to college students' mental health and academic performance, investigated the role of self-esteem as a mediator for the relations, and further tested the effectiveness of an intervention in reducing social media addiction and its potential adverse outcomes. In Study 1, we used a survey method with a sample of college students (N = 232) and found that social media addiction was negatively associated with the students' mental health and academic performance and that the relation between social media addiction and mental health was mediated by self-esteem. In Study 2, we developed and tested a two-stage self-help intervention program. We recruited a sample of college students (N = 38) who met criteria for social media addiction to receive the intervention. Results showed that the intervention was effective in reducing the students’ social media addiction and improving their mental health and academic efficiency. The current studies yielded original findings that contribute to the empirical database on social media addiction and that have important theoretical and practical implications.

Cultural differences in humor perception, usage, and implications.

Abstract: Humor is a universal phenomenon but is also culturally tinted. In this article, we reviewed the existing research that investigates how culture impacts individuals’ humor perception and usage as well as humor’s implications for psychological well-being. Previous research has substantiated evidence that Easterners do not hold as positive an attitude toward humor as their Western counterparts do. This perception makes Easterners less likely to use humor as a coping strategy in comparison with Westerners. Despite this difference, Westerners and Easterners have similar patterns in the relationship between their humor and psychological well-being index, though the strength of the relationship varies across cultures. Implications and potential future research avenues discussed.

Travelling backwards and forwards in time: culture and gender in the episodic specificity of past and future events.

Abstract: There is considerable evidence that, when recalling past events, Westerners exhibit greater episodic specificity than East Asians and women exhibit greater episodic specificity than men. Yet it is unknown whether the same cultural and gender differences are true for future events. In the present study 209 European American and Chinese young adults were asked to recall past personal events and imagine future personal events occurring in varied time periods (i.e., 1 week, 1 year, 10-15 years). Regardless of time period, European Americans consistently produced more specific details than Chinese for future events than they did for past events, and women produced more specific details than men for both past and future events. These findings provide additional support for the constructive-episodic-simulation hypothesis, and shed new light on the influence of culture and gender on episodic thinking.

“When I Was Little”: Childhood Recollections in Chinese and European Canadian Grade School Children

Abstract: Recollection of early childhood experiences was investigated in 225 European Canadian and 133 Chinese children (ages 8, 11, and 14) by a memory fluency task that measured accessibility of multiple early memories and elicited the earliest memory. Younger children provided memories of events that occurred at earlier ages than older children. Furthermore, Canadian children produced more memories and had an earlier age of first memory than did Chinese children, with cultural differences in both measures increasing with age. It appears that while adultlike childhood amnesia is still emerging among Canadian children, Chinese children by age 14 already resemble adults. Content of Canadian versus Chinese children's memories reflected an autonomous versus relational self-construal. Results are discussed in terms of sociocultural influences on memory.

Social Class, Sense of Control, and Social Explanation

Abstract: Lower social class is associated with diminished resources and perceived subordinate rank. On the basis of this analysis, the authors predicted that social class would be closely associated with a reduced sense of personal control and that this association would explain why lower class individuals favor contextual over dispositional explanations of social events. Across 4 studies, lower social class individuals, as measured by subjective socioeconomic status (SES), endorsed contextual explanations of economic trends, broad social outcomes, and emotion. Across studies, the sense of control mediated the relation between subjective SES and contextual explanations, and this association was independent of objective SES, ethnicity, political ideology, and self-serving biases. Finally, experimentally inducing a higher sense of control attenuated the tendency for lower subjective SES individuals to make more contextual explanations (Study 4). Implications for future research on social class as well as theoretical distinctions between objective SES and subjective SES are discussed.

In Search of East Asian Self-Enhancement

Abstract: A meta-analysis of published cross-cultural studies of self-enhancement reveals pervasive and pronounced differences between East Asians and Westerners. Across 91 comparisons, the average cross-cultural effect was d = .84. The effect emerged in all 30 methods, except for comparisons of implicit self-esteem. Within cultures, Westerners showed a clear self-serving bias (d = .87), whereas East Asians did not (d = -.01), with Asian Americans falling in between (d = .52). East Asians did self-enhance in the methods that involved comparing themselves to average but were self-critical in other methods. It was hypothesized that this inconsistency could be explained in that these methods are compromised by the "everyone is better than their group's average effect" (EBTA). Supporting this rationale, studies that were implicated by the EBTA reported significantly larger self-enhancement effect for all cultures compared to other studies. Overall, the evidence converges to show that East Asians do not self-enhance.