Kosuke Takemura
Email: takemura@psych.ubc.ca
Homepage: http://www.psych.ubc.ca/~takemura
Research Interests:
I am interested in socially constructed aspects of human psychology and behavior and the processes by which individuals influence each other. An example of such social constructs is culture - which has several influences on our psychology and behavior, but in itself is created collectively by society. My research focuses on the cultural differences between East Asia and North America in 1) group processes (e.g., cooperation, intergroup behavior, attentional allocation in group-contexts), 2) self-concepts (e.g., self-esteem), and 3) other psychological mechanisms (e.g., need for uniqueness). In addition, I am tackling not only the question how psychological processes differ across cultures, but also the question as to why these differences exist. To this end, I am taking a viewpoint that has emerged from the field of evolutionary psychology which sees the cultural variations in psychological mechanisms as adaptive processes under different ecological and social contexts
Publications
Falk, C.F., Heine, S.J., Yuki, M., & Takemura, K. (2009). Why do
Westerners self-enhance more than East Asians? European Journal of Personality, 23, 183-203.
Schug, J., Yuki, M., Horikawa, H., & Takemura, K. (2009). Similarity attraction and actually selecting similar others: How cross-societal differences in relational mobility affect interpersonal similarity in Japan and the United States. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 12, 95-103.
Takemura, K., & Arimoto, H. (2008). Independent self in Japan's "Northern frontier": An experiment of cognitive dissonance in Hokkaido. Japanese Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 40-49 (in Japanese).
Takemura, K., & Yuki, M. (2007). Are Japanese groups more competitive than Japanese individuals? A cross-cultural validation of the interindividual-intergroup discontinuity effect. International Journal of Psychology, 42, 27-35.
Kitayama, S., Ishii, K., Imada, T., Takemura, K., & Ramaswamy, J. (2006). Voluntary settlement and the spirit of independence: Evidence from Japan's "Northern frontier". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 369-384.
Yuki, M., Maddux, W. W., Brewer, M. B., & Takemura, K. (2005). Cross-cultural differences in relationship- and group-based trust. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 48-62.