Publications

Obsessions - recurrent unwanted intrusive thoughts - are one of the two pillars of the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Although OCD has been reported across many different cultures, research on these cultural variations is hampered by the lack of cross-culturally sound instruments to assess intrusive thoughts. The aim of the current study is to investigate the psychometric properties of the recently developed Leuven Obsessional Intrusions ...

When immigrant minorities engage in a new cultural context, their patterns of emotional experience come to change - a process we coined emotional acculturation. To date, research on emotional acculturation focused on the antecedents and consequences of changes in minorities' fit with the new culture. Yet, most minorities also continue to engage in their heritage culture. Therefore, the current research investigated which personal and situational ...

Emotion suppression has been found to have negative psychological and social consequences in Western cultural contexts. Yet, in some other cultural contexts, emotion suppression is less likely to have negative consequences; relatedly, emotion suppression is also more common in those East-Asian cultural contexts. In a dyadic conflict study, we aim to (a) conceptually replicate cultural differences found in previous research with respect to the ...

The more immigrant minorities are exposed to the majority culture, the more their emotional pattern fits that of majority culture members ‐ a phenomenon termed emotional acculturation. To assess emotional fit, earlier studies compared minorities’ emotional experience with that of separate samples of ‘distant’ majority members in their country of residence. We add ‘proximal’ fit with the emotional experience of majority members in their social ...

When immigrant minority individuals engage in frequent and positive social contact with majority culture members, their emotions become a better fit with the majority norm; the increased fit is called emotional acculturation. In the current research, we test the prediction that high-quality interactions with majority others, in which minorities feel accepted, increase the likelihood of emotional fit. We also explore whether this prediction holds ...

The intent of this Special Issue is to be a starting point for a broadly-defined European cultural psychology. Across seven research articles, the authors of this Special Issue explore what European culture(s) and European identity entail, how acculturation within the European cultural contexts takes place and under what conditions a multicultural Europe might be possible. The Special Issue also discusses what is currently missing from the ...