Korea University's Cultural, social, and personality psychology is the only one in Korea that provides an opportunity to combine cultural psychology and social, and personality psychology with each other through research within one major.
It is a study of social psychology, which studies the power in a situation that overwhelms the individual, and personality psychology, which studies the power of an individual through circumstance, in a cultural context.
Researches in a wide range of subjects ranging from the cultural psychology that compares the unique psychology of Koreans with the East and the West, to social cognition and emotion, altruism and happiness, self and identity, and the following major areas are also being conducted.
Choi, Eunsoo Associate Professor
Just as emotional and cognitive psychological processes are formed in a cultural context, cultural and psychological processes are similarly complex and interrelated.
Assistant Professor Choi uses a cross-cultural approach to examine the relationships between the cultural self, norms, beliefs, and individual emotional or psychological processes. She specifically pays attention to psychological well-being, happiness, and meaning as a measure of an individual’s ability to function while adapting to culture. In the future, she plans to research the psychological or physical health of various groups and individuals (e.g., migrants, multicultural communities, and minorities) that interact with Korean society and its cultural context.
Hur, Taekyun Professor
Social cognition is a major research area of social psychology that primarily focuses on social judgment, illusion, and postfamily thinking.
Professor Heo’s recent studies investigate how Korean cultural and psychological characteristics result in thinking process differences. In addition, he is conducting various social-psychological research on evaluation processes and leisure psychology to determine leisure’s psychological meaning.
Park, Sun W. Associate Professor
What is the power that leads a person’s life? I want to answer the question why some people live a happy and healthy life fulfilling their potentials, some can’t get better despite endless efforts, and others don’t even try to live a better life. I think the problem of identity is at the core of this question, so I am running several lines of research on identity.
Self, Identity, Narrative Identity, Materialism, and Growth Motivation