Qi Wang (psychologist)
Chinese-born psychologist
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Qi Wang was born in Chongqing, China. Both of her parents were senior engineers before retirement. Her choice of becoming a psychologist was influenced by her aunt, a psychology professor at a Chinese university. Wang received her undergraduate degree in psychology from Peking University. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in psychology (with a minor in anthropology) in 2000 at Harvard University. Her academic advisors were Michelle Leichtman and Sheldon White. Wang’s dissertation, “Culture, self, and emotion: An integrative perspective on the development of autobiographical memory,” won the James McKeen Cattell Award for outstanding dissertation in psychology from the New York Academy of Sciences. Wang subsequently joined the Cornell Human Development faculty as an assistant professor and became a full professor in 2011. In July 2017, Wang was named Chair of the Department of Human Development. Cornell Human Development is a top developmental science department in the United States, known for its interdisciplinary and integrative research of development across the lifespan and being associated with many intellectual giants including Urie Bronfenbrenner. Wang is the first person-of-color to chair the Department since it was founded in 1925. During her term, Wang launched many initiatives to maintain and enhance the academic distinction and inclusion of the Department, and she created a blueprint for what has later become the Cornell Center for Integrative Developmental Science. Wang served as the Department Chair until July 2021, when the Department was made to merge with the psychology department to strengthen Cornell psychology.
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Research
Wang proposes a cultural dynamic theory of autobiographical memory, arguing that memory is not simply a product of the mind or brain but instead a social-cultural construction. Her research reveals that people from different cultures often show diverse ways of remembering their past experiences: They differ in what to remember, how to remember, and why to remember it. These cultural differences in memory emerge early in childhood and persist across the lifespan. Her work further shows that these differences stem from the influences of a variety of cultural elements such as cultural self-construal, perceptual encoding, language, emotion cognition, and mnemonic practices. Wang details a model of a culturally saturated mnemonic system in which cultural elements constitute and condition various processes of remembering.
Wang also studies childhood amnesia (or infantile amnesia), a phenomenon in which adults show inability to recall memories from the earliest years of life. She and Carole Peterson observed that when remembering early childhood experiences, both children and adults systematically date the events at later ages than they actually were - a telescoping bias. This finding has critical implications for the theoretical explanation for childhood amnesia. Furthermore, her research reveals cultural differences in childhood amnesia, whereby Westerners recall earlier, more numerous, more self-focused, and more emotionally laden childhood memories than do East Asians.
Wang further leads the research effort to understand the impact of the Internet and social media as a cultural force on memory. She suggests that the public, interactive, and immediate nature of online posting changes what and how individuals remember about their experiences and further shapes their sense of self and identity. Studies by Wang and her colleagues show that whereas sharing personal information (e.g., a recent family trip) online leads to better memory for the information, sharing public information (e.g., by reposting or retweeting news) results in impoverished recall. Wang proposes a triangular theory of self in the era of social media - the represented self in the private mind, the registered self on social media platforms, and the inferred self by the virtual audience - that introduces new ways to understand and study memory and self in our digitally mediated society.
In addition to studying memory, Wang has undertaken extensive studies to examine future thinking, self-concept, and emotion knowledge in cultural contexts, the influence of the Internet and social media on human behavior, and the relation of socio-cognitive processes to psychological well-being.
Wang emphasizes the pivotal role of culture in shaping mind and behavior. She urges psychologists to take culture into account in their research so as to eliminate culture-bound biases and build a true psychological science. Using a multi-level analysis approach, her research demonstrates the many ways in which culture and mind interact.