Markus Kemmelmeier, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department Of Sociology Ph.D., University of Michigan (Psychology), 2001 Diplom-Psychologe, Universitaet Mannheim, 1994

Research interests:

My current research interests include the study of culture in its various facets. This includes patterns of individualism-collectivism across various societies, as well as influences of cultural values on the framing of public policy issues, e.g., assisted death or affirmative action policies.
Further, I am studying the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) influence of cultural symbols on self-related thoughts and behavior (e.g., the American flag).

I have always been involved in intergroup research in one form or another. My focus has been how stereotypes and intergroup attitudes tend to be influenced by, but also recreate social hierarchy between different groups on society. Occasionally, I find somewhat paradoxical effects such that individuals with an egalitarian orientation are more likely to show biases than those who do not share such value commitments. And don't underestimate the influence the impact of apparently unifying political and cultural icons, which turn out to facilitate the rejection, rather than inclusion of those on the fringe of society! Other current interest include attitudes between the hearing and the deaf, Americans' responses to the Abu Ghraib abuses (and the framing thereof).

Another research emphasis of mine is thinking and reasoning in its social context. I am particularly fascinated by situations that seem to be governed by "conversational logic", when people's responses are based on (not always accurate) assumptions they are making about their interaction partners. Other interests include the study of group decision making as well as the emergence of creative behavior in a group context.

In keeping with the last focus, but not necessarily focused on the social context, I conduct research on judgment on decision making. Specifically, I am interested to what extent personal involvement and expertise shapes the way we think about risk, vulnerability or how and what we think is important to us. This gets me often into issues of political communication.

Recent publications:

Kemmelmeier, M., Jambor, E., & Letner, J. (in press). Individualism and good works: Cultural variation in giving and volunteering across the United States. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

Kemmelmeier, M. (in press). The effects of race and social dominance orientation in simulated juror decision making. Journal of Applied Social Psychology.

Hilton, D. J., Kemmelmeier, M., & Bonnefon, J.-F. (2005). Putting ifs to work: Goal-based relevance in conditional directives. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Kemmelmeier, M., & Cheng, B. Y.-M. (2004). Language and self-construal priming: A replication and extension in a Hong Kong sample. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 35, 705-712.

Kemmelmeier, M. (2004). Separating the wheat from the chaff: Does discriminating between diagnostic and and nondiagnostic information eliminate the dilution effect? Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 17, 231-243.

Kemmelmeier, M., Bless, H., Schwarz, N., & Bohner, G. (2004). What research participants learn from rewards: A conversational logic analysis of rewarding reasoning performance. Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive/Current Psychology of Cognition, 22, 267-287.

Kemmelmeier, M. (2004). Authoritarianism and candidate support in the U.S. presidential elections of 1996 and 2000. Journal of Social Psychology, 144, 218-221.

Oyserman, D., Kemmelmeier, M., Fryberg, S. Brosh, H., & Hart-Johnson, T. (2003). Racial-ethnic self-schemas. Social Psychology Quarterly, 66, 333-347.

Kemmelmeier, M., Burnstein, E., Krumov, K., Genkova, P., Kanagawa, C., Hirshberg, M., Erb, H.-P., Wieczorkowska, G., & Noels, K. (2003). Individualism, collectivism and authoritarianism in seven societies. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34, 304-322

Kemmelmeier, M. (2003). Individualism and attitudes toward affirmative action: Evidence from priming studies. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 25, 111-119.

Cantor, N., Kemmelmeier, M., Basten, J., & Prentice, D. A. (2002). Life task pursuit in social groups: Balancing self exploration and social integration. Self and Identity, 1, 177-184.

Kemmelmeier, M., Król, G., & Kim, Y. H. (2002). Values, economics and pro-environmental attitudes in 22 societies. Cross-Cultural Research, 36, 256-285.

Oyserman, D., Coon, H. M., & Kemmelmeier, M. (2002). Rethinking individualism and collectivism: Evaluation of theoretical assumptions and meta-analyses. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 3-72.

Oyserman, D., Kemmelmeier, M., & Coon, H. M. (2002). Cultural psychology: A new look. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 110-117.

Kemmelmeier, M., Wieczorkowska, G., Erb, H.-P., & Burnstein, E. (2002). Individualism, authoritarianism and attitudes toward assisted death: Cross-cultural, cross-regional and experimental evidence. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 32, 60-85.

Contact Info:

Contact: markusk@unr.edu

Homepage: http://unr.edu/homepage/markusk/