Fiona Lee

University of California, Irvine | UCI · Department of Finance

In today’s global world, it has become increasingly important for individuals moving to a different country for work, study, or permanent relocation to successfully adapt to this new culture. Responding to recent calls in the literature for more ecological approaches to the study of cultural adaptation, we examine the effect of host country histori...

In this chapter, the authors examine the social-personality processes underlying multiculturalism and multicultural identity and the cultural and societal factors that influence these phenomena. They focus the discussion on bicultural identity integration (BII), an individual difference construct describing the extent to which a bicultural individu...

Drawing on psychological research, the authors examine how individuals who have been exposed to multiple cultures differ in their cultural experiences, cultural identities, and adaptation to foreign cultures. A survey of multicultural business students found that those who first moved to a foreign country at a relatively younger age and moved to re...

Drawing on psychological research, we examine how individuals who have been exposed to multiple cultures differ in their cultural experiences, cultural identities, and adaptation to foreign cultures. A survey of multicultural business students found that those who first moved to a foreign country at a relatively younger age and moved to relatively...

Bicultural Identity Integration (BII), or biculturals’ perceived compatibility between their two cultural identities, has been found to predict a variety of psychological processes and behavioral outcomes. However, it is not clear why biculturals differ in their levels of BII. We suggest that the valence of bicultural experiences influences BII. Fu...

Novel solutions are often created by combining existing but previously unrelated knowledge (Royce, 1898; Schumpeter, 1934; Amabile, 1996). Unrelated or disparate knowledge can come from different individuals, but they can also reside within one mind (e.g., Cheng, Sanchez-Burks, & Lee, 2008). In this chapter, we introduce the concept of psychologica...

Culture plays an important role in shaping body image, and people from different cultures have different beliefs about what constitutes the "ideal" body type. This study examines the relationship between culture and body ideals in Asian-American and Black-American women. Results from two studies show that subjective cultural identity and situationa...

Some power cues are explicit, obvious and salient, while others are implicit, subtle and harder to detect. Drawing from research demonstrating that people assimilate to implicit cues and contrast from explicit ones, we suggest that implicit and explicit power cues have different effects on people. Two laboratory experiments found that when power cu...

This chapter describes a preliminary study of the Values in Action (VIA) strengths of character and their relationship to work satisfaction across a variety of occupations. Relying on a large Internet sample (N = 7348) of adults from the United States, we found that across occupations, character strengths of curiosity, zest, hope, gratitude, and sp...

This article examines how multiracial individuals negotiate their different and sometimes conflicting racial identities. Drawing from previous work on bicultural identity integration (see Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005), we proposed a new construct, multiracial identity integration (MII), to measure individual differences in perceptions of compat...

To explore the possible socio-cognitive consequences of biculturalism, we examined the complexity of cultural representations in monocultural and bicultural individuals. Study 1 found that Chinese-American biculturals’ free descriptions of both American and Chinese cultures were higher in cognitive complexity than that of Anglo-American monocultura...

In two studies drawing from social identity theory and the creative-cognition approach, we found that higher levels of identity integration--perceived compatibility between two social identities--predict higher levels of creative performance in tasks that draw on both identity-relevant knowledge domains. Study 1 showed that Asian Americans with hig...

In this chapter, we posit that identity integration, an individual difference variable measuring the degree to which multiple and disparate social identities are perceived as compatible, moderates the relationship between team diversity and innovation. Prior research shows that individuals with higher levels of identity integration exhibit higher l...

How does diversity affect individuals and the groups in which they are embedded? This article examines this question using recent theory and research on Identity Integration (II). II refers to an individual's perceptions about whether two distinct social identities, or social groups to which individuals belong, are viewed as compatible (high II) or...

Three studies examined the psychological antecedents and processes related to individual-level innovation. We propose that individuals who can integrate multiple social identities are better at combining knowledge systems associated with each identity, and thus exhibit higher levels of innovation. Three studies, each probing different types of soci...

This study examines how the valence of cultural cues in the environment moderates the way biculturals shift between multiple cultural identities. The authors found that when exposed to positive cultural cues, biculturals who perceive their cultural identities as compatible (high bicultural identity integration, or high BII) respond in culturally co...

This paper describes the development of a theory-based cross-cultural training intervention we call relational ideology training, and reports a field experiment testing its effectiveness in facilitating intercultural collaborations. The intervention was based on Protestant relational ideology (PRI) theory (Sanchez-Burks, 2002) and cross-cultural em...

The verbal strategies used to frame requests for help are integral to the help-seeking process. Drawing on politeness theory, it was predicted that gender, power, and norms affect usage of verbal strategies in seeking help, and verbal strategies predict interpersonal outcomes. Two studies showed that: (a) individuals used more strategies under coll...

These studies proposed that effective social accounts should contain external, unstable, specific, and uncontrollable attributions. In Study I, managers provided accounts for a negative event. The accounts contained highly unstable and specific attributions but, contrary to original predictions, they also contained highly internal and controllable...

To explore the possible cognitive consequences of biculturalism, the authors examine the complexity of cultural representations in monocultural and bicultural individuals. Study 1 found that Chinese American biculturals' free descriptions of both American and Chinese cultures are higher in cognitive complexity than that of Anglo-American monocultur...

People's causal attributions for events in their lives have been shown to relate to individual and interpersonal outcomes. Groups and organizations also make causal attributions, and this article examines whether their publicly communicated attributions predict organizational-level outcomes. By content analyzing attributions contained in corporate...

This paper examines how the inconsistency of organizational conditions affects people's willingness to engage in experimentation, a behavior integral to innovation. Because failures are inevitable in the experimentation process, we argue that conditions giving rise to psychological safety reduce fear of failure and promote experimentation. Based on...

Four experiments provided evidence that East-West differences in attention to indirect meaning are more pronounced in work settings compared with nonwork settings as suggested by prior research on Protestant relational ideology. Study 1 compared errors in interpreting indirect messages in work and nonwork contexts across three cultures. Studies 2 a...

The authors propose that cultural frame shifting—shifting between two culturally based interpretative lenses in response to cultural cues—is moderated by perceived compatibility (vs. opposition) between the two cultural orientations, or bicultural identity integration (BII). Three studies found that Chinese American biculturals who perceived their...

Proactivelyseeking help from others involves “social costs” because the help seeker appears incompetent, dependent, and inferior to others. This article hypothesizes that these costs are especially threatening when the help seeker is male and in a male-oriented occupational role, when the helper is in a higher or lower status role than the help see...

Although power is considered by many to be a fundamental way people organize social relationships, we know little about the psychological experience of being powerful, or the underlying mechanisms through which power affects individuals. In this paper, we review evidence suggesting that power creates a subjective sense of separation and distinctive...

Little is known about the conditions that lead observers to adopt different inferential goals in the context of their everyday lives. Four studies examined whether future expectations created situational inferential goals. In 2 quasiexperimental studies, students made more situational inferences for targets in their expected future careers. In 2 ex...

Little is known about the conditions that lead observers to adopt different inferential goals in the context of their everyday lives. Four studies examined whether future expectations created situational inferential goals. In 2 quasiexperimental studies, students made more situational inferences for targets in their expected future careers. In 2 ex...

Making external attributions for negative events, though often considered "self-serving," also implies that the attributor is not in control of critical resources. We hypothesized that making external attributions for negative events will lead to impressions of powerlessness. Because individuals in high-status roles are expected to have power and c...

Individuals do not seek help, even when help is needed and available, because help seeking implies incompetence and dependence, and therefore is related to powerlessness. It was hypothesized that gender, status, and organizational norms affect the importance of maintaining and accruing power, which in turn affect help seeking behaviors. A laborator...

Content analysis can be a particularly suitable method for measuring cognitive variables from archived texts. Although content analysis has been underused by clinical psychologists, there are many benefits to this strategy. Longitudinal studies can be conducted retrospectively, the range of possible research participants can be expanded to include...

Content analysis can be a particularly suitable method for measuring cognitive variables from archived texts. Although content analysis has been underused by clinical psychologists, there are many benefits to this strategy. Longitudinal studies can be conducted retrospectively, the range of possible research participants can be expanded to include...

The positivity bias (the tendency to make internal attributions for others' successes and external attributions for others' failures) was examined in newspaper sports articles from the US and Hong Kong. The positivity bias was observed in both cultures; however, the cultures manifested this bias differently. There was a greater emphasis on enhancin...

Several lines of experimental research have shown that attributional styles are affected by the attributor's culture, inferential goals, and level of cognitive processing. Can these findings be replicated in natural settings? This study compared the attributions made in two domains (sports articles and editorials) of newspapers published in two cul...

This article extends the validity of politeness theory (P. Brown and S. Levinson, 1987) by investigating the nonlinguistic aspects of politeness in 2 cultures. Politeness strategies expressed through different channels of communication (silent video, speech, full-channel video and audio, and transcripts of speech) were examined, and it was found th...

To explore the possible socio-cognitive consequences of biculturalism, we examined the complexity of cultural representations in monocultural and bicultural individuals. Study 1 found that Chinese-American biculturals' free descriptions of both American and Chinese cultures were higher in cognitive complexity than that of Anglo-American monocultura...