Research

Overview of Michael Morris's contributions to scientific research in psychology and behavioral sciences as well as business topics such as management and marketing. 

Find on this page links to the research papers and to bibliometric sites that show the influence of these works on other works in the field.

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Honors

Major awards

  •  IACMR Distinguished Scholarly Contribution Award, 2025 (anticipated)

  • Outstanding Contribution to Cultural Psychology, SPSP, 2023.

  • Best Paper in Management Education, Academy of Management, 2022.

  • Responsible Research in Management Award, Academy of Management Fellows, 2020.

  • Misumi Award, Asian Association of Social Psychology, 2005.

  • Robert Ferber Award, Journal of Consumer Research, 2001.

  • Otto Klineberg Intercultural & International Relations Award, SPSSI, 2000.

  • Ascendant Scholar Award, Western Academy of Management, 1999.

  • Hillel Einhorn New Investigator Award, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, 1996.

  • Outstanding Dissertation Award, Society of Experimental Social Psychology, 1993.

Selected conference recognitions

  • Conference Theme Best Paper Award, Finalist, IACMR, 2023

  • Best Paper, International Human Resources, AOM, 2016, 2010

  • Best Paper Award, Human Capital International Conference, 2014

  • Best Diversity-related Symposium, SPSP, 2012 

  • Best Paper, International Management Division, AOM, 2011

  • Best Paper Award, Gender and Diversity in Organizations Division, AOM, 2008

  • Best Paper Award, Conflict Management Division, AOM, 2002

  • Best Paper Award, Managerial and Organizational Cognition Division, AOM, 1998

Editorships 

  • Consulting Editor, Management and Organization Review

  • Consulting Editor at the Journal of International Business

  • Associate Editor (Former), Psychological Review

  • Special-issue editor (Former), Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Publications

Google scholar

For a full overview of Michael’s published papers and related articles, visit Google Scholar to read and reference the 200+ scientific papers.

Recent publications

For a quick reference to the most recent publications, see the list below.

  1. Widespread misestimates of greenhouse gas emissions suggest low carbon competence

    EJ Johnson, ER Sugerman, VG Morwitz, GV Johar, MW Morris, Nature Climate Change, 2024

  2. When the one true faith trumps all: Low religious diversity, religious intolerance, and science denial

    Y Ding, GV Johar, MW Morris, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences nexus, 2024

  3. The effect of configural processing on mentalization

    KM Fincher, T Zhang, A Percaya, A Galinsky, MW Morris, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2024

  4. Formal versus informal supervisor socio‐emotional support behaviours and employee trust: The role of cultural power distance

    J Cho, SA Wasti, K Savani, HH Tan, MW Morris, Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 2024

  5. Appropriate or appropriative? Diversity ideologies, judgment factors, and condemnation of cultural borrowing

    R Zhang, MM Chao, J Cho, M Morris, PsyArXiv, 2024

  6. Spheres of immanent justice: Sacred violations evoke expectations of cosmic punishment, irrespective of societal punishment

    N Goyal, K Savani, MW Morris, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2023

  7. Should I Stay or Should I Go? The Contextualized Intersectionality Among Global Professionals

    XL Liu, MW Morris, YB Wang, Academy of Management Proceedings, 2023

  8. Experiential learning of cultural norms: The role of implicit and explicit aptitudes.

    K Savani, MW Morris, K Fincher, JG Lu, SB Kaufman, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2002

  9. The surprising underperformance of East Asians in US law and business schools: The liability of low assertiveness and the ameliorative potential of online classrooms

    JG Lu, RE Nisbett, MW Morris, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022

Notable Contributions

Michael’s impact has come primarily in the field of cultural psychology, which has surged in recent decades with discoveries that some classic principles of psychology discovered in the West take take different forms in non-Western cultures. Michael has discovered divergences in processes of cognition, communication, conflict resolution, and social relationships. He pioneered dynamic models of how cultural frames activate and evolve. This “dynamic constructivist” paradigm has spawned new theories of biculturalism and multicuturalism.

Culture and attributions

In his dissertation, Morris proposed that the “Fundamental Attribution Error,” is partly a product of cultural individualism and, hence, less prounounced in Chinese societies. Working with a visiting Chinese student, Kaiping Peng, he conducted comparative studies with novel tests of the bias, such as perceiving causality in cartoons. American and Chinese perceivers had parallel perceptions of mechanical causality but diverging impressions of social causality. An individual who swims ahead of others was perceived by American participants as leading the others; it was judged by Chinese participants as chased by the others. 

Subsequent research with Tanya Menon found that a reversal in the case of group actors. Chinese participants are more likely to attribute to traits of groups. Later studies with Xi Zou documented that these differing styles of social judgment are carried by differing norms about agency.

Culture and cause: American and Chinese attributions for social and physical events

MW Morris, K Peng, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1994

Culture and the construal of agency: Attribution to individual versus group dispositions

MW Morris, K Peng T Menon, MW Morris, C Chiu, Y Hong, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,, 1999

Culture as common sense: perceived consensus versus personal beliefs as mechanisms of cultural influence.

X Zou, KP Tam, MW Morris, S Lee, IYM Lau, C Chiu, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2009 

Culture and conflict

Why do Americans take disputes to court whereas Chinese resolve them in negotiation or mediation? In studies with Kwok Leung and Sheena Iyengar, Morris examined conflict resolution choices. One reason is the negative person attributions Americans draw during the conflict, which discourage them from approaches requiring cooperation. A coworker conflicts conducted with Kathy Phillips and many others found that Americans favor the confrontational “competing” style (associated with individualistic values) whereas Chinese favor the harmony-preserving “avoiding” style (associated with collectivist values). Research with Zhi Liu found that standard conflict models fail to capture a common approach in collectivist cultures: avoiding confrontation but competing covertly. Consistent with this picture of harm in harmony, people feel greater worry about peers in China than in the US. 

Conflict management style: Accounting for cross-national differences

MW Morris, KY Williams, K Leung, et al.; Journal of International Business Studies, 1998

Views from inside and outside: Integrating emic and etic insights about culture and justice judgment

MW Morris, K Leung, D Ames, B Lickel; Academy of management review, 1999

Person perception in the heat of conflict: Negative trait attributions affect procedural preferences and account for situational and cultural differences

MW Morris, K Leung, SS Iyengar; Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 2004

Ingroup vigilance in collectivistic cultures

SS Liu, MW Morris, T Talhelm, Q Yang; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2019

How does collectivism affect social interactions? A test of two competing accounts

SS Liu, G Shteynberg, MW Morris, Q Yang, AD Galinsky; Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2021

Triggers of cultural influence

To avoid overly rigid depictions, Morris’s lab began asking, not just how do cultural groups differ, but also when do they differ. What situational cues or inner needs bring cultural frameworks into operation? Eastern traditions valorize the middle path, but when does this affect East Asians’ decisions? With Donnel Briley, Morris observed a bias in consumer decisions toward compromise when the choice required providing a reason (and thereby brought culturally conferred norms to the fore). Later studies found that Hongkongers favored compromise when questioned in Chinese (vs. English) and their audience was Chinese (vs. American). Highly influential studies with Ying-yi Hong and Chi-yue Chiu explored the role of culture-related images as cues. Hongkongers who exposed to American imagery (football players in their helmets) generated more individualistic attributions than those exposed to Chinese imagery (kung fu students in ther robes). Inner needs also heighten reliance on cultural frames. When under time pressure, Americans respond more individualistically and Chinese respond more collectivistically. Individuals with certainty-seeking temperaments gravitate to the typical responses of their culture. These discoveries led to the dynamic constructivist model of cultural influence. 

Reasons as carriers of culture: Dynamic versus dispositional models of cultural influence on decision making

DA Briley, MW Morris, I Simonson, Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2000

Multicultural minds: A dynamic constructivist approach to culture and cognition

Y Hong, MW Morris, C Chiu, V Benet-Martinez, American Psychologist, 2000

Cultural chameleons: Biculturals, conformity motives, and decision making

DA Briley, MW Morris, I Simonson, Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2005

Epistemic motives and cultural conformity: need for closure, culture, and context as determinants of conflict judgments

JH Fu, MW Morris, S Lee, M Chao, C Chiu, Y Hong, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2007

Isolating effects of cultural schemas: Cultural priming shifts Asian-Americans' biases in social description and memory

MW Morris, A Mok, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2011

Heritage-culture images disrupt immigrants’ second-language processing through triggering first-language interference

S Zhang, MW Morris, CY Cheng, AJ Yap, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013

Negotiating multiple cultures

The dynamic paradigm lent itself to new models of how people manage multiple cultural identities, worldviews, and repertoires. Rather stuck in between two cultures, bicultural individuals can “frame switch” effortlessly in response to situational cues. Studies led by Verònica Benet-Martínez found that biculturals’ identity integration affects their frame-switching dynamics: those who experience their two sides as compatible tend to follow to cultural cues whereas those experience them as conflicting tend to react against cues by affirming their non-cued identity. Studies with Aurelia Mok and Zaijai Lu confirmed that this defensive reaction arises from fear of non-cued identities being left out.  Other work studies how cultures are shaped by their exposure to and interaction with neighboring cultures.

Negotiating biculturalism: Cultural frame switching in biculturals with oppositional versus compatible cultural identities

V Benet-Martínez, J Leu, F Lee, MW Morris, Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology, 2002

Bicultural self-defense in consumer contexts: Self-protection motives are the basis for contrast versus assimilation to cultural cues

A Mok, MW Morris, Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2013

Bolstering biculturals: Self-affirmation reduces contrastive responses to identity primes

Z Liu, J Brockner, MW Morris, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2021

Polycultural psychology

Michael W. Morris, Chi-yue Chiu, Zhi Liu, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2015

When the one true faith trumps all: Low religious diversity, religious intolerance, and science denial

Yu Ding, Gita Venkataramani Johar, Michael W Morris, PNAS nexus, 2024

Social networks and culture

Morris has also studied cultural differences in social relationships and networks. At a global bank with standardized organizational structure and operations, employees in different nations still differed in their everday patterns of interaction with coworkers. These reflected norms of the surrounding national cultures: In the US more short-lived ties, in Hong Kong more upwardly directed, in Germany more bureaucratically constrained, and in Spain more affiliative. A series of studies with Paul Ingram and Roy Chua compared the professional networks of executives in the US and China and examined how this affected trust in working relationships. Consistent with the folk construct of guanxi, economic exchange and affective closeness were more intertwined in China than in the US, and the network embeddedness of relationships fostered trust to a greater extent.

Embracing American culture: Structures of social identity and social networks among first-generation biculturals

A Mok, MW Morris, V Benet-Martínez, Z. Karakitapoğlu-Aygün, Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology, 2007

Do people mix at mixers? Structure, homophily, and the “life of the party”

P Ingram, MW Morris, Administrative Science Quarterly, 2007

Culture and coworker relations: Interpersonal patterns in American, Chinese, German, and Spanish divisions of a global retail bank

MW Morris, J Podolny, BN Sullivan, Organization Science, 2008

Guanxi vs networking: Distinctive configurations of affect- and cognition-based trust in the networks of Chinese vs American managers

RYJ Chua, MW Morris, P Ingram, Journal of international business, 2009

Breaking down the “bamboo ceiling”

Because Asian-Americans are held up as a model minority, their challenges of workplace inclusion have received relatively little attention. Given their high overall career and educational attainment, a problem was not obvious in most diversity data. Working with Jackson Lu and Richard Nisbett, Morris clarified the matter by analytically separating East Asians and South Asians, given their stark cultural differences with regard to assertive communication. East Asians are underrepresented, but South Asians are not and cultural divergence in assertiveness is the main reason. Compared to South Asians, East Asians are less likely to speak up, engage in constructive debates, and stand their own grounds in conflicts. The difference in culture mediated the leadership attainment gap between East Asians and South Asians in the United States. Thus, the Bamboo Ceiling is not an "Asian issue", but an issue of cultural fit with American leadership norms. Another paper found the same problem in the classroom: East Asians underperform for the same reasons in graduate MBA and JD programs, their Confucian habits ill-suited to the combative Socratic classroom.

Other areas of impact

Aside from cultural research, Michael has contributed to basic research about reasoning, judgment, and decision making and applications to problems like climate change and conflict resolution.

When one cause casts doubt on another: A normative analysis of discounting in causal attribution

Michael W Morris, Richard P Larrick, Psychological Review, 1995

Rapport in conflict resolution: Accounting for how face-to-face contact fosters mutual cooperation in mixed-motive conflicts

AL Drolet, MW Morris, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2000

Widespread misestimates of greenhouse gas emissions suggest low carbon competence

EJ Johnson, ER Sugerman, VG Morwitz, GV Johar, MW Morris, Nature Climate Change, 2024

Michael made influential contributions to the study of negotiation, such as work with Aimee Drolet and Roy Chua elucidating the role of rapport or affect-based trust. With Emily Amanatullah, he conducted studies investigating the sources of gender differences in negotiation and strategies for allaying them.

Schmooze or lose: Social friction and lubrication in e-mail negotiations

M Morris, J Nadler, T Kurtzberg, L Thompson, Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 2002

How emotions work: The social functions of emotional expression in negotiations

MW Morris, D Keltner, Research in organizational behavior, 2000

Negotiating gender roles: Gender differences in assertive negotiating are mediated by women’s fear of backlash and attenuated when negotiating on behalf of others

ET Amanatullah, MW Morris, Journal of personality and social psychology, 2010

Collaborating across cultures: Cultural metacognition and affect-based trust in creative collaboration

RYJ Chua, MW Morris, S Mor, Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 2012

All papers

For an exhaustive list of papers and access to PDFs, see the archive below.