Research

I am a social scientist who studies emotions in their cultural contexts, with a focus on how valuing social image shapes emotion. My interest in social image has led me to focus on social situations in which people are respected (or valued) and disrespected (or devalued) by others, including instances of prejudice, discrimination, and other forms of unfair treatment towards the self and important ingroups. My research covers a wide range of emotions, from happiness and pride to anger, envy, fear, sadness, and shame. In my studies, I often assess multiple aspects of an emotion, including cognitive appraisals (e.g., degree of perceived harm to ingroup social image), intensity of feelings (e.g., intensity of felt anger in response to insult), motivations (e.g., wanting to restore a positive social image), and coping (e.g., religious coping; rumination).

As a cultural psychologist, I study culture in terms of how cultural values and concerns influence the relationship between social image and emotion. I focus on cultural values related to how one is expected to relate to others (e.g., cooperation, competition), and on honor. In my Honor-as-Multifaceted approach, I have defined honor as a set of inter-related honor codes, with the Honor Scale measuring individual differences in endorsement of honor codes through a diversity of behaviors and social images (e.g., having a reputation for being trustworthy).The Honor-as-Multifaceted approach gives a central place to the intersectionality between culture and gender, as it includes gendered beliefs and cultural practices important for the protection of honor. More generally, I view gender as essential to research on culture and emotion processes. Consequently, gender is central to my research, for example, in terms of the social images that are most important to different gender groups.

I adopt a multi-method approach in my research (autobiographical narratives of emotion; field experiments; interviews; surveys). I do cross-cultural research as well as research focused on specific cultures. In both types of studies, I emphasize the cultural perspective(s) that come from within the culture(s) where the study is situated. In methodological terms, this translates into an emphasis on culturally sensitive research procedures and measures, including an attention to language and to the sociopolitical and historical circumstances of research participants. My research includes a diversity of cultures, with a special emphasis on cultural and religious minorities and underrepresented groups in psychology (e.g., Pakistani; Turkish, Moroccan, Bangladeshi cultural minorities in Europe; Muslim minorities in the U.S. and Europe).

Grounded in my previous work, my current research projects focus on (I) multifaceted honor and morality; (II) Muslim Americans’ emotions about social image devaluation; (III) envy and cultural views on success; (IV) cultural meanings of emotion among youth.