Takahiko Masuda

Dr. Takahiko Masuda (増田 貴彦, Masuda Takahiko) is a cultural psychologist, and associate professor of psychology at the University of Alberta. Dr. Masuda received his M.A from Kyoto university in 1996 under the supervision of Shinobu Kitayama, and later received his Ph.D from the University of Michigan where his adviser was Richard E. Nisbett In perhaps his most popular study Dr. Masuda displayed a series of images with characters of varied emotional expression. There was a distinct measurable difference in the way North Americans and Japanese perceived the emotion of the central figure of the image, such that for North Americans the perception of the emotion of the central figure was not affected by whether or not the figures in the background showed a congruent emotion. Whereas the Japanese participants were markedly influenced in their judgement of the central figures emotional state depending on the emotional states of the surrounding figure.

Selected Publications

• Masuda, T., Gonzalez, R. Kwan, L., & Nisbett, R. E. (2008). Culture and aesthetic preference: Comparing the attention to context of East Asians and European Americans. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1260–1275
• Masuda, T., Ellsworth, P. C., Mesquita, B., Leu, J., Tanida, S., & van de Veerdonk, E. (2008). Placing the face in context: Cultural differences in the perception of facial emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 365-38
• Masuda, T. & Nisbett, R. E. (2006). Culture and change blindness. Cognitive Sciences, 30, 381-399.
• Masuda, T., & Kitayama, S. (2004). Perceived-induced constraint and attitude attribution in Japan and in the US: A case for cultural dependence of the correspondence bias. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 409-416.
• Masuda, T. & Nisbett, R. E. (2001). Attending holistically vs. analytically: Comparing the context Sensitivity of Japanese and Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 922-934.

Awards

• Book of the Year Award, The Japanese Society of Social Psychology Book of the Year Award.
• Brickman Memorial Award, University of Michigan
• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Standard Research Grant
• Japanese Psychological Association Award for International Contributions to Psychology

Lab

Dr. Masuda runs an active research lab at the University of Alberta, dept. of psychology, where he supervises a number of graduate and undergraduate research projects while conducting his own research.

Affiliations

• American Psychological Society
• Cognitive Science Society
• Canadian Psychological Association
• Japanese Psychological Association
• Society of Personality and Social Psychology