Understanding Social Psychology Across Cultures

PETER K SMITH is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, U.K. He has a first degree from University of Oxford, and a PhD from University of Sheffield. His main area of research is on school bullying. He is currently particularly interested in country differences and cross-cultural comparisons. He has also carried out research on children’s play; and on the role of grandparents in children’s development. He has been involved in bullying research for 30 years. In the UK he helped produce the national anti-bullying pack Don’t Suffer in Silence (1994, 2nd edition 2000). He chaired COST Action IS0801 on Cyberbullying (2008-2012). He chaired an Indian-European Research Networking Programme on Bullying, Cyberbullying, and Pupil Safety and Well-Being (2012-2015). He is currently on the Management Committee of COST Action CA18115, Transnational Collaboration on Bullying, Migration and Integration at School Level. In 2015 he was awarded the William Thierry Preyer award for Excellence in Research on Human Development, by the European Society for Developmental Psychology, and in 2018 the Student Wellbeing and Prevention of Violence (SWAPv) Award, from Flinders University, Australia. In December 2018 he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Vienna.

Ronald Fischer was born near Leipzig in former East Germany in 1976, and completed his doctorate in cross-cultural psychology at the University of Sussex in 2002. He is currently Reader in Psychology at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He has spent much of his adult life exploring remote corners of the world, carrying a laptop and camera. He has broad interests concerning the interplay between culture and human functioning in diverse ecological settings, tackling these big questions applying multivariate statistics and multilevel models. He has published more than 100 papers and book chapters, and is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

Vivian L. Vignoles was born near Rochester, UK, in 1973, and obtained his PhD in social psychology at the University of Surrey in 2000. He is currently Reader in Social Psychology at the University of Sussex. His principal research interests are in self and identity processes and cross-cultural psychology, especially understanding the interplay of cultural, contextual, and motivational influences on identity construction, and he is principal investigator of the Culture and Identity Research Network. He has published more than 30 journal articles and book chapters and one edited book, and is an Associate Editor of the European Journal of Social Psychology.

Michael Harris Bond was born in Toronto, Canada in 1944, obtaining his PhD in social psychology from Stanford University in 1970. Working first at Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan, he next joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he was Professor of Social Psychology for many years. He has contributed to many aspects of cross-cultural psychology, focusing particularly on Chinese social behavior, comparative studies of belief systems, and improvements in cross-cultural research methods. He has published more than 270 papers and books in the field. In 2009, he was appointed Chair Professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.