We can lead a good life in a number of ways. We think it is possible to classify them into three large categories of a good life: a happy life, a meaningful life, and a psychologically rich life (Oishi & Westgate, 2022). We are conducting many studies to investigate predictors and outcomes of happiness, meaning, and psychological richness.
Oishi, S., & Diener, E. (2014). Residents of poor nations have a greater sense of meaning in life than residents of wealthy nations. Psychological Science, 25(2), 422–430. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613507286
Diener, E., Oishi, S. & Tay, L. (2018). Advances in subjective well-being research. Nature Human Behaviour, 2, 253–260. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0307-6
Oishi, S., & Westgate, E. C. (2022). A psychologically rich life: Beyond happiness and meaning. Psychological Review, 129(4), 790–811. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000317
Socio-ecological psychology is the study of how social ecology affects one’s feeling, thinking, and behavior, and how one’s feeling, thinking, and behavior give rise to certain social ecology (Oishi, 2014). There are many kinds of social ecology, ranging from population density to sex ratio to climate to political systems. Our lab is mainly interested in the ecology that affects our social relationships such as residential mobility, walkability, and income inequality.
Oishi, S., & Graham, J. (2010). Social Ecology: Lost and Found in Psychological Science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5(4), 356–377. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691610374588
Oishi, S., Koo, M., & Buttrick, N. R. (2019). The socioecological psychology of upward social mobility. American Psychologist, 74(7), 751–763. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000422
Oishi, S., & Tsang, S. (2022). The socio-ecological psychology of residential mobility. Journal of Consumer Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.1310
“Culture consists of explicit and implicit patterns of historically derived and selected ideas and their embodiment in institutions, practices, and artifacts” (Adams & Markus, 2003, p. 341). When a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and a tsunami caused a nuclear meltdown, the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s executives knelt down and apologized during the press conference. That was an extreme situation that required an extreme response. But, in general, being apologetic, saying “I am sorry” often is considered a good thing in Japan. You can even say “I am sorry” (すみませんでした) in the context of “Thank you” in Japan. In contrast, you are even discouraged from apologizing in some situations in the U.S. We investigate how these differences in cultural practices shape our feeling, thinking, and behavior in our everyday lives (e.g., how gratitude evokes indebtedness, Oishi et al., 2019).
Oishi, S., & Gilbert, E. (2016). Current and future directions in culture and happiness research. Current Opinions in Psychology, 8, 54-58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.10.005
Oishi, S., Bak, H, & Caluori, N. (2022). The Cultural psychology of inequality: Current and Future Directions. Asian Journal of Social Psychology (an invited article), 25(1), 103-116.
Buttrick, N., & Oishi, S. (2021). The cultural dynamics of declining residential mobility. American Psychologist, 76(6), 904–916. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000881