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In this post, I recount part of my journey into the nitty-gritty of cross-cultural differences in behavior. More specifically, I discuss the link between skateboarding across the USA, attractive Japanese women in tights, and the paradoxical nuances in conformity between cultures.

Although popular belief (and a heartwarming children’s song) holds that we all laugh in the same language, recent research has found that people are remarkably adapt at detecting local accents in the way that emotions are expressed. In this blog, I will review the research that suggests that the...

Play dates or homework? Piano lessons or TV? Mothers generally want the best for their children. However, what is ‘the best’? Happiness or academic achievement? And, how should parents go about raising their children in the ‘best’ way possible? One answer to this question is to be a ‘tiger parent’...

In a recent cross-cultural study of Facebook users in Japan and the US, I show that Japanese SNS users are more concerned about Internet privacy than American SNS users. And it turns out that because Americans have higher general trust, they less likely to believe that a stranger would take...

Do you feel the need to feel good about yourself in order to be happy? Research suggests that if you have a lot of opportunities to make new friends, it is more likely that you will answer this question with a ‘yes’ than when you have more of a set group of people you spend time with. In this blog...

Imagine that your national football team has to play against the team of a neighboring country. You are very excited about this event and invited your friends over to watch the game together. When the other team scores a second goal and is winning, you see that the football fans of that team are

Are fraud and other questionable practices in science caused by a few bad apples, or a culture that rewards based on results, not rigor? In this post, I will argue that our scientific environment is selecting for the wrong kind of scientist.