B.A., UC San Diego, 1995
B.S., UC San Diego, 1995
M.A., Ohio State University, 1997
Ph.D., Ohio State University, 2000

Lab Site

Curriculum Vitae [PDF]

Name Pronunciation Guide:
"VAL-ur-ee COOL-my-ur"

Click below to hear pronunciation

Research Interests

My research program explores cognition from a developmental and evolutionary perspective. I examine the origins of our cognitive capacities, focusing primarily on our abilities to distinguish animate and inanimate objects, to interpret the behavior and infer the mental states of others, and to engage in prosocial behaviour. Each is examined in a comparative manner, studying infants, young children, and non-human primates. The research thus relies upon both developmental and comparative psychology theory to form and test hypotheses.

Selected Publications

Click to go to a full list of publications by Valerie Kuhlmeier

Books:

Olmstead, M.C. & Kuhlmeier, V.A. (2015). Comparative Cognition. Cambridge University Press.

Rutherford, M.D. & Kuhlmeier, V.A. (Eds.) (2013). Social Perception: Detection and Interpretation of Animacy, Agency, and Intention. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books.

Representative Papers and Book Chapters:

Hilton, B.C., O'Neill, AC., & Kuhlmeier, V.A. (2021). Emerging selectivity: Group membership and early prosociality. Journal of Cognition and Development, 22(2), 267-280.

Kuhlmeier, V.A., Karasewich, T.A., & Olmstead, M.C. (2020). Teaching animal learning and cognition: Adapting to the online environment. Comparative Cognition and Behavior Reviews, 15, 187-198

Karasewich, T.A., & Kuhlmeier, V.A. (2020). Trait social anxiety as a conditional adaptation: A developmental and evolutionary framework. Developmental Review, 55, 100886.

Karasewich, T., Kuhlmeier, V.A., Beier, J.S., & Dunfield, K.A. (2019). Getting help for others: An examination of indirect helping in young children. Developmental Psychology, 55, 606-611. PsyArXiv: 10.31234/osf.io/qmgdp

Hilton, B.C., & Kuhlmeier, V.A. (2019). Intention attribution and the development of moral evaluation. Frontiers in Psychology: Developmental Psychology.

Dunfield, K.A., Best, L.J., Kelley, E.A., & Kuhlmeier, V.A. (2019). Motivating moral behavior: Helping, sharing, and comforting in young children with autism spectrum disorder. Frontiers in Psychology: Developmental Psychology.

O'Neill, A.C., Swigger, K., & Kuhlmeier, V.A. (2018). Make The Connection’ parenting skills program: a controlled trial of associated improvement in maternal attitudes. Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, 36(5), 536-547. doi: 10.1080/02646838.2018.1497779

Robson, S.J., & Kuhlmeier, V.A. (2016). Infants’ understanding of object-directed action: An interdisciplinary synthesis. Frontiers in Psychology, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00111

Sabbagh, M.A., Koenig, M.A., & Kuhlmeier, V.A. (2016). Conceptual constraints and mechanisms in children’s selective social learning. Developmental Science, 10.1111/desc.12415.

Robson, S.J., Lee, V., Kuhlmeier, V.A., & Rutherford, M.D. (2014). Infants use contextual contingency to guide their interpretation of others' goal-directed behavior. Cognitive Development, 31, 69-78.

Dunfield, K.A. & Kuhlmeier, V.A. (2013). Classifying prosocial behaviour: children’s responses to instrumental need, emotional distress, and material desire. Child Development, 84, 1766-1776.

Dunfield, K.A., Kuhlmeier, V.A., O’Connell, L., & Kelley, E. (2011). Examining the diversity of prosocial behavior: helping, sharing, and comforting in infancy. Infancy, 16(3), 227-247.

Newman, G.E., Keil, F.C., Kuhlmeier, V.A., & Wynn, K. (2010). Early understandings of the link between agents and order. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 17140-17145.

Dunfield, K.A., & Kuhlmeier, V.A. (2010). Intention-mediated selective helping in infancy. Psychological Science, 21, 523-527.

Yamaguchi, M., Kuhlmeier, V.A., Wynn, K., & vanMarle, K. (2009). Continuity in Social Cognition from Infancy to Childhood. Developmental Science, 12, 746-752.

Kuhlmeier, V.A., Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2003). Attribution of Dispositional States by 12-month-olds. Psychological Science, 14, 402-408.

Kuhlmeier, V.A., & Boysen, S.T. (2002). Chimpanzees' recognition of the spatial and object similarities between a scale model and its referent. Psychological Science, 13, 60-63.

B.S., Peking University
M.S., Peking University
Ph.D., University of Michigan

Lab Site

Curriculum Vitae [PDF]

Research Interests

I am interested in understanding the relationships between culture and cognition. Specifically, I have been studying how culture (East Asian vs. American) shapes the way people think and behave. Research (including some of my own) has shown that the culture in which we grew up affects the way we perceive, interpret and respond to the world. I am particularly interested in cultural impacts on thinking and reasoning (as broadly defined), and the implications for social cognition. In my research, I have examined cultural differences in attention/perception, categorization, prediction, and judgment and decision making.

Selected Publications

Ji, L.J., Vaughen-Johnson, Zhang, Z., Jacobson, J., Zhang, N., & Huang, X. (in press). Context and cultural differences in optimism. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

Yang, Z., Ji, L.J., Yang, Y., Wang, Y., Zhu, L., & Cai, H. (2021). Meaning making helps cope with covid-19: A longitudinal study. Personality and Individual Difference, 174, 110670.

Ji, L.J., Khei, M., Yap, S., Wang, X., Zhang, Z., & Hou, Y. (in press). Cultural differences in the construal of suffering and the COVID-19 pandemic. Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Imtiaz, F., Ji, L.J. & Vaughen-Johnson, T. (2021). Exploring preference for present- and future-focused job opportunities across seniors and young adults. Current Psychology.

Chen, Q., Wang, X.Q., He, X.X., Ji, L.J. Liu, M., & Ye, B. (2021). The relationship between search for meaning in life and symptoms of depression and anxiety: Key roles of the presence of meaning in life and life events among Chinese adolescents. Journal of Affective Disorders, 282, 545-553.

Imtiaz, F. & Ji, L.J., (2021). Then and Now: Examining the impact of temporal focus on persuasive messages across seniors and young adults, Experimental Aging Research, 47(1), 57-78.

Spina, R., Ji, L.J., Li, Y., & Zhang, Z. (2020). Cultural differences in the tendency to seek practical versus theoretical information. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. 51(7-8), 636-653.

Lee, A., Ji, L.J., Li, Y., & Zhang, Z. (2020). Fear David or Goliath? Inferring competence from demeanor across cultures. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 46 (7), 1074-89.

Ji, L.J. & An, S. (2020). Cultural differences in people’s responses to accidents. Journal of Loss and Trauma.

Imtiaz, F., Ji, L. J., & Vaughan-Johnston, T. (2019). Exploring the influence of a low-dose mindfulness induction on performance and persistence in a challenging cognitive task. Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology, 2, 107-118.

Ji, L.J., Yap, S., Best, M., & McGeorge, K. (2019) Global processing makes people happier than local processing. Frontiers in Psychology.

Ji, L.J, Hong, E., Guo, T., Zhang, Z., Su, Y., & Li, Y. (2019). Culture, psychological proximity to the past and future, and self-continuity. European Journal of Social Psychology, 49 (4), 735-747.

Yap, S., Ji, L.J., & Hong, E. (2018). Culture and cognition. In Sharon Tompson-Schill (ed.) The Stevens’ Handbook of Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New Jersey.

Imtiaz, F., Khei, M., & Ji, L. J. (2018). Resilience through Suffering: A Potential Military Application. In A. MacIntyre, D. Legace-Roy, & D.R. Lindsay (Eds.) Global Views on Military Stress and Resilience. Canadian Defence Academy Press, 37-53.

Zhang, N., Ji., L.J., Bai, B., & Li, Y. (2018). Culturally Divergent Consequences of Receiving Thanks in Close Relationships. Emotion, 18(1), 46-57.

Zhang, N., Ji. L.J., & Guo, T. (2018) Culture and lay theories of change, in Julie Spencer-Rogers and Kaiping Peng (Eds.) The Psychological and Cultural Foundations of East Asian Thinking, Oxford University Press, 81-104.

Ji. L.J., & Chan, E. (2017) Chinese thinking styles and religion, in Justin Barrett and Ryan Hornbeck (eds.) Religious cognition in China, Springer International, 35-54.

Ji, L.J., Zhang, N., Li, Y., Zhang, Z., Harper, G, Khei, M., & Li, J. (2017). Cultural variations in reasons for advice-seeking. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 30:708-718.

An, S., Ji, L.J., Marks, M., & Zhang, Z. (2017). Two Sides of Emotion: Exploring positivity and negativity in six basic emotions across cultures. Frontiers in Psychology. 8: 610

Zhang, N., Ji, L.J., & Li, Y. (2017). Cultural differences in opportunity cost consideration. Frontiers in Psychology. 8: 45.

Ji, L.J., & Yap, S. (2016). Culture and cognition. Current Opinion in Psychology. 8: 105-111. DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.10.004

Zhang, N., & Ji, L.J. (2015). Beyond whom and when: a revisit of the influences of social norms on behavior. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. 46: 1319-1323.

Ji, L.J., McGeorge, K., Li, Y., Lee, A., & Zhang, Z. (2015). Culture and gambling fallacies. Springerplus, 4 (1):510.

Lee, A., & Ji, L.J. (2014). Moving away from a bad past and towards a good future: feelings influence the metaphorical understanding of time. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 143(1), 21-26.

Miyamoto, Y., Knoepfler, C.A., Ishii, K., & Ji, L.J. (2013). Cultural variation in the focus on goals versus processes of actions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39(6), 707-719

Ji, L.J., & Kaulius, M. (2013). Judgment and decision making across cultures. Advances in Psychological Science, 21(3), 381-388.

Guo, T., Ji, L.J, Spina, R., & Zhang, Z. (2012). Culture, temporal focus, and values of the past and the future. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(8), 1030 – 1040. (correspondence author)

Jacobson, J., Ji, L.J., Ditto, P.H., Zhang, Z., Reiss, S.K., Legnini, V., Sorkin, D., Roper-Coleman, S., Ebel-Lam, A. (2012). The Effects of Culture and Self-Construal on Responses to Threatening Health Information. Psychology and Health.

Rounding, K., Lee, A., Jacobson, J., & Ji, L.J. (2012). Religion Replenishes Self-Control. Psychological Science. 23(6), 635-642.

Miyamoto, Y., & Ji, L.J. (2011). Power fosters context-independent, analytic cognition. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(11), 1449-1458.

Hsieh, A.Y., Tripp, D., Ji, L.J. (2011). The influence of ethnic concordance and discordance on verbal reports and nonverbal behaviors of pain. Pain. 152(9),2016-22

Ji, L.J. (2010). Is Confucian culture forgiving? Learning and Individual Difference, 20(6), 569-570.

Hsieh, A.Y., Tripp, D.,Ji, L.J. & Sullivan, M.J.L. (2010) Comparisons of catastrophizing, pain attitudes, and cold pressor pain experience between Chinese and European Canadian young adults. Journal of Pain. 11(11), 1187-94.

Spina, R., Ji, L.J., Guo, T., Zhang, Z, Li, Y., & Fabrigar, L. (2010) Cultural Differences in the Representativeness Heuristic: Expecting a Correspondence in Magnitude between Cause and Effect. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 36(5), 583-597.

Spina, R., Ji, L.J., Ross, M., Li, Y., & Zhang, Z. (2010) Why best can’t last: Cultural differences in anticipating regression toward the mean. Asian Journal of Social Psychology. 13, 153-162.

Ji. L.J., Lee, A., & Guo, T. (2010) The thinking styles of Chinese people, in Michael Bond (ed.) The handbook of Chinese Psychology (2nd edition), Oxford University Press, p155-167.

Yates, F.J.,Ji, L.J., Oka, T, Lee, J.W., Shinotsuka, H., & Sieck, W. (2010) Indecisiveness and culture: Incidence, values, and thoroughness. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 41(3), 428-444.

Ji, L.J., Guo, T., Zhang, Z.,& Messervey, D. (2009) Looking into the past: Cultural differences in perception and representation of past information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(4), 761-769.

Ji, L.J. (2008) The leopard cannot change his spots, or can he: Culture and the development of lay theories of change. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(5), 613-622.

Ji, L.J., Zhang, Z., & Guo, T. (2008) To buy or to sell: Cultural differences in stock market decisions based on stock price trends. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 21(4), 399-413.

Ji, L.J. (2005). Culture and lay theories of change. In Culture and Social Behavior: The Tenth Ontario Symposium. Edited by Richard M. Sorrentino, Dov Cohen, Jim Olson, Mark Zanna. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 117 -135.

Messervey, D., Ji, L.J., & Uchida, Y. (2004). Cognition and Culture. In Charles Spielberger (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology. San Diego, CA: Elsevier Ltd., 357-364.

Ji, L.J., Zhang, Z., & Nisbett, R.E. (2004) Is it Culture, or is it language? Examination of language effects in cross-cultural research on categorization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(1), 57-65.

Ji, L.J., Zhang, Z., Usborne, E., & Guan, Y. (2004). Optimism across cultures: In response to the SARS outbreak. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 7(1), 25-34.

Haberstroh, S., Oyserman, D., Schwarz, N., Kuhnen, U., & Ji, L.J. (2002) Is the interdependent self more sensitive to question context than the independent self? Self-construal and the observation of conversational norms. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 323-329.

Hedden, T., Park, D., Nisbett, R.E.,Ji, L.J., Jing, Q., & Jiao, S. (2002) Cultural variation in verbal versus spatial neuropsychological function across the lifespan. Neuropsychology, 16, 65-73.

Ji, L.J., Nisbett, R.E., & Su, Y. (2001) Culture, change, and prediction. Psychological Science. 12 (6), 450-456.

Ji, L.J., Peng, K., & Nisbett, R.E. (2000) Culture, control and perception of relationships in the environment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 78 (5), 943-955.

Ji, L.J., Schwarz, N., & Nisbett, R. E. (2000) Culture, autobiographical memory, and social comparison: Measurement issues in cross-cultural studies. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 26 (5), 586-594.

B.A., (Honors), Northwestern University, 1990
M.A., Ohio State University, 1995
Ph.D., Ohio State University, 1999

Lab Site

Curriculum Vitae [PDF]

Name Pronunciation Guide:
"jil JAY-kuhb-suhn"

Click below to hear pronunciation

Research Interests

I study the social-cognitive and social-behavioural consequences of two distinct but related individual differences: dysphoria and causal uncertainty. Dysphoria refers to mild to moderate levels of depression, and causal uncertainty pertains to confidence in one’s ability to understand why things happen to oneself and to others. My current research is focused primarily on trying to understand an interesting paradox: Although dysphoric and causally uncertain people are more motivated to understand other people and more accurate in their social perceptions, they also are more likely to experience interpersonal problems including greater loneliness, shyness, and social rejection.

Selected Publications

Rounding, K., Jacobson, J. A., & Hart, K. E. (2016). The protective role of religiosity: Moderating causal uncertainty in the parent-offspring dysphoria relationship. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 8, 1-12.

Rounding, K., Jacobson, J. A., & Lindsay, R. C. L. (2014). Examining the effects of changes in depressive symptomatology on eyewitness identification. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 33, 495-511. doi: 10.1521/jscp.2014.33.6.495.

Rounding, K., & Jacobson, J. A. (2013). The role of causal uncertainty in the relationship between perceived parental dysphoria and offspring’s own dysphoria. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 37, 1058-1069.

Boucher, E. M., & Jacobson, J. A. (2012). Causal uncertainty during initial interactions. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42, 652-663.

Rounding, K., Lee, A., Jacobson, J. A., & Ji, L. J. (2012). Religion replenishes self-control. Psychological Science, 23, 635-642.

Jacobson, J. A., Weary, G., & Lin, Y. S. (2008). Causal uncertainty and metacognitive inferences about goal attainment. Cognition and Emotion, 22, 1276-1305.

Jacobson, J. A. (2007). The relationship among causal uncertainty, reassurance seeking, and dysphoria. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 26, 923-940.

B.A., Gettysburg College, 2008
Ph.D., University of Michigan, 2017

Lab Site

Curriculum Vitae [PDF]

Name Pronunciation Guide:
"DAY-vid HOW-zer"

Click below to hear pronunciation

Research Interests

David studies judgment and social cognition, namely how communication guides our inferences, preferences, and reasoning. His work investigates how seemingly innocuous words color evaluations, how metaphors guide understanding of abstract concepts like disease and health, and how common survey methods shape research conclusions.

Selected Publications

Hauser, D. J., Ellsworth, P. C., & Gonzalez, R. (2018). Are manipulation checks necessary? Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 998.

Hauser, D. J. & Schwarz, N. (2018). How seemingly innocuous words can bias judgment: Semantic prosody and impression formation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 75, 11-18.

Hauser, D. J., Nesse, R. M., & Schwarz, N. (2017). Lay theories and metaphors of health and illness. In Zedelius C., Muller, B., & Schooler J. W. (Eds.) The science of lay theories: How beliefs shape our culture, cognition, and health. (pp. 341-354). Springer.

Hauser, D. J. & Schwarz, N. (2016). Semantic prosody and judgment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145, 882-896.

Hauser, D. J. & Schwarz, N. (2016). Attentive Turkers: MTurk participants perform better on online attention checks than subject pool participants. Behavior Research Methods, 48, 400-407.

Hauser, D. J. & Schwarz, N. (2015). IT'S A TRAP!: Instructional manipulation checks prompt systematic thinking on "tricky" tasks. SAGE Open, 5, 1-6.

Hauser, D. J. & Schwarz, N. (2015). The war on prevention: Bellicose cancer metaphors hurt (some) prevention intentions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41, 66-77.

Hauser, D. J., Preston, S. D., Stansfield, R. B. (2014). Altruism in the wild: When affiliative motives to help positive people overtake empathic motives to help the distressed. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 1295-1305.

Meier, B. P., Hauser, D. J., Robinson, M. D., Friesen, C. K., & Schjeldahl, K. (2007). What’s “up” with God?: Vertical Space as a representation of the divine. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 699-710.

B.P.E., University of Alberta, 1983
M.A., McGill University, 1986
Ph.D., McGill University, 1992

Lab Site

Curriculum Vitae [PDF]

Research Interests

Although scientists have invented chess programs that can rival grand-masters, we have yet to design a robot that comes close to matching the dexterity of a 5-year old child. The aim of research in the Cognition and Action Lab is to understand the cognitive and computational processes underlying movement control and learning. Visit the web site to learn how we use virtual reality and other tools to study eye-hand coordination, object manipulation, sensory-motor adaptation, and links between action and perception.

Selected Publications

For a full list of publications, please contact Randy Flanagan