My main current research interest is in Chinese morality concepts, including prototypes of immoral behavior and excellent moral character. I also study culture's effects on motivation, values about reasoning, and the use of personality trait information; cultural-moral relativism; and how to teach about cultural differences, with a focus on improving cross-cultural understanding.

Between my undergraduate and graduate degrees, I lived for four years in Mainland China, teaching English in a high school as a Yale-China fellow; learning Mandarin Chinese at the IUP program in Tsinghua University (Beijing), supported by a Blakemore fellowship; and teaching in the Psychology department of Peking University under the mentorship of Dr. Yanjie Su.

HKPU Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2009-2010, Hong Kong Polytechnic University (under Michael H. Bond & Sylvia X. Chen)
Ph.D., Psychology (2009), University of British Columbia
M.A., Psychology (2005), University of British Columbia
B.A., Psychology and Philosophy (1999), Yale University

Ph.D. Dissertation: A Sense of Obligation: Culture and the subjective experience of meeting expectations
2010 Harry and Pola Triandis Doctoral Thesis Award (IACCP)
Co-Chairs: Ara Norenzayan and Steven J. Heine

Primary Interests:

Culture and Ethnicity
Ethics and Morality
Helping, Prosocial Behavior
Intergroup Relations
Interpersonal Processes
Motivation, Goal Setting
Personality, Individual Differences
Research Methods, Assessment
Social Cognition

Culture and Ethnicity
Ethics and Morality
Helping, Prosocial Behavior
Intergroup Relations
Interpersonal Processes

Motivation, Goal Setting
Personality, Individual Differences
Research Methods, Assessment
Social Cognition

Journal Articles:

Buchtel, E. E., & Norenzayan, A. (2008). Which should you use, intuition or logic? Cultural differences in injunctive norms about reasoning. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 11, 264-273.
Chen, S. X., Bond, M.B., Chan, B., Tang, D., & Buchtel, E. E. (2009). Behavioral manifestations of modesty. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 40(4), 603-626.
Dunn, E. W., Buchtel, E. E., & Aknin, L. B. (2011). Consensus at the heart of division: Comment on Norton & Ariely (2011). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 13-14.
Heine, S. J., & Buchtel, E. E. (2009). Personality: The universal and the culturally specific. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 369-394.
Heine, S. J., Buchtel, E. E., & Norenzayan, A. (2008). What do cross-national comparisons of personality traits tell us? The case of conscientiousness. Psychological Science, 19(4), 309-313.
Leu, J., Mesquita, B., Ellsworth, P. C., Zhang, Z-Y., Yuan, H-J., Buchtel, E. E., Karasawa, M., & Masuda, T. (2010). Situational differences in dialectical emotions: Boundary conditions in a cultural comparison of North Americans and East Asians. Cognition and Emotion, 24, 419-435.

Other Publications:

Buchtel, E. E. (2011). Methodology and current research directions in cross-cultural conflict resolution. In L. Biukovic & P. B. Potter (Eds.), International Trade and Selective Adaptation (pp. 28-58). Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia Press.
Buchtel, E. E., & Norenzayan, A. (2009). Thinking across cultures: Implications for dual processes. In J. Evans & K. Frankish, (Eds.), In two minds: Dual processes and beyond (pp. 217-238). New York: Oxford University Press.

Courses Taught:

Social Psychology

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Emma E. Buchtel
Department of Psychological Studies
Hong Kong Institute of Education
10 Lo Ping Road
Tai Po, N.T.
Hong Kong