Michelle YIK at HKUST

Since Michelle received her PhD degree from the University of British Columbia, she never stops working on emotion and personality. In 2002, she joined the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology where she served as the founding director of the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program during 2009-2016, as the acting head of Division of Social Science during 2011-2013, and as the director of Undergraduate Recruitment and Admissions during 2016-2020.

At HKUST, Michelle teaches Psychology of Personal Growth, Personality Psychology, Leveraging Personality in the Workplace, Growing Up the Chinese Way, and Seminar on Emotion. She also offers Big Five Personality Workshop. The personal growth course provides ample opportunity to satisfy her “id” impulses of performing in front of 400 students. The other courses provide a platform on which to utilize her research to enrich students’ understanding of human behaviors in comparative perspective. In 2007, Michelle won the Humanities and Social Science Teaching Award; in 2010, she became the medalist for the Michael G. Gale Medal for Distinguished Teaching; and in 2011, she was the finalist for the University Grants Committee Teaching Award. Michelle is currently taking part in two MOOC courses and they are Psychology of Personal Growth and My Favorite Lectures @ HKUST.

Michelle is happily married to Steven and they have two children. While Stephanie was a UBC baby who walked Michelle through long days of completing a multi-cultural study on the structure of emotion resulting in a 300-page dissertation, Christopher was a HKUST baby who challenged her to strike a balance between the “stress and tension” of the tenure pursuit and a family energized by a newborn. Both children are grown-ups now, as they claim, allowing Michelle to live out her childhood dreams.

Curriculum Vitae | Google Scholar

Michelle’s research centers on emotion and personality. Currently, she is exploring three crucial areas of human experience: the nature of emotion, the relationship between personality and language, and the interface between large language models (LLMs) and mental health.

Her first line of research concerns the development of a circumplex model in the English and Chinese languages to describe emotion. Recently, she collaborated with researchers from 33 communities covering 25 languages to examine the structure of emotion and its relationship with personality and psychological well-being. This study sought to extend emotion research beyond Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies. Fueled by the initial success in cross-cultural teamwork and her passion for using an interdisciplinary approach to study emotion, she is currently editing the Oxford Handbook of Emotion and Culture.

Her second line of research explores the role of language in personality. Do bilingual individuals have two distinct personalities? Her initial findings show that when responding in Chinese (as opposed to English), Chinese bilinguals saw themselves as more neurotic, agreeable, and conscientious. What is primed by the test language? Why does using Chinese lead to a perception of increased neuroticism? Cultural values and reference groups are possible factors accounting for the language effect. She is currently designing studies to test their influences.

Her third line of research is a spin-off from her work on sentiment analysis of social media data. It examines whether LLMs can enhance researchers’ understanding of users’ emotions. How valid are LLM-assessed emotions? Are they related to life outcomes such as mental wellness? Answering these questions is an essential step toward developing AI systems that accurately understand human emotions.

Yik, M. (Ed.). (in press). The Oxford Handbook of Emotion and Culture.
Götz, F. M., & Yik, M. (2025). Personality science around the world [Editorial]. Personality Science, 6.
Yik, M. (2024). Hello, Neihou: Anchoring and adjustment in personality assessment. Personality Science, 5.
Yik, M., Russell, J. A., & Steiger, J. H. (2011). A 12-point circumplex structure of core affect. Emotion, 11, 705-731.
Yik, M., (2010). How unique is Chinese emotion? In M. H. Bond (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of Chinese psychology (2nd ed., pp. 205-220). Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.
Yik, M. (2010). Affect and interpersonal behaviors: Where do the circumplexes meet? Journal of Research in Personality, 44, 721-728.
Yik, M. (2009). Studying affect among the Chinese: The circular way. Journal of Personality Assessment, 91, 416-428.
Yik, M. (2007). Culture, gender, and the bipolarity of momentary affect. Cognition and Emotion, 21, 664-680.
Yik, M., & Russell, J. A. (2004). On the relationship between circumplexes: Affect and Wiggins’ IAS. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 39, 203-230.
Yik, M., Russell, J. A., Ahn, C.-K., Fernández Dols, J. M., & Suzuki, N. (2002). Relating the five-factor model of personality to a circumplex model of affect: A five language study. In R. R. McCrae & J. Allik (Eds.), The five-factor model of personality across cultures (pp. 79-104). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
Yik, M., Bond, M. H., & Paulhus, D. L. (1998). Do Chinese self-enhance or self-efface? It’s a matter of domain. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 399-406.

(1) HappyU: A 90-day Diary Study

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(2) The Oxford Handbook of Emotion and Culture Project

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The general goal of this handbook is to bring together contemporary and comparative research in the interplay between emotion and culture, from across the fields of psychology, neuroscience, biology, anthropology, philosophy, and linguistics, forming a comprehensive and exhaustive handbook. Our 38 chapters are contributed by 94 authors (54% female) from 15 countries:

1. Appraisal Theories and Culture | Phoebe C. Ellsworth, Klaus R. Scherer, & Susanna Schmidt

2. The Interplay of Evolution and Culture in Emotion: A Basic Emotion Perspective | Dacher Keltner & Laura Guzman

3. Natural and Cultural Selection in Emotion and Behavior: Evolution Isn’t What It Used to Be | Carlos Crivelli, Alan J. Fridlund, & Blythe A. Williams

4. Culture in the Psychological Construction of Emotion | James A. Russell, Maria Gendron, Alan J. Fridlund, & Michelle Yik

5. The Biocultural History of Emotions | Rob Boddice

6. Culture and Emotion: An Anthropological View | Andrew Beatty

7. Evolutionary and Cultural Aspects of Emotion-based Stories in Fictional Literature, Film, and Graphic Media | Keith Oatley & Si Jia Wu

8. Emotion and Nonverbal Interaction Across Cultures: Insights from Ethology | José-Miguel Fernández-Dols & José Sánchez-García

9. The Development of Children’s Understanding of Emotions: Variation and Stability across Cultures | Liao Cheng & Paul L. Harris

10. Family Emotion Socialization in the Cultural Context | Yang Yang & Qi Wang

11. Emotional Development in Different Cultural Contexts | Sivenesi Subramoney, Eric Walle, & Linda Camras

12. Gendering Emotion Across Cultures and Throughout History | Shaocong Ma & Stephanie A. Shields

13. Motivational Mechanisms Behind Emotional Preferences in Cognitive Processing Across Adulthood and Cultures | Nicole L. Fung, Xianmin Gong, & Helene H. Fung

14. Culture, Emotion, and Cognitive Aging | Kesaan Kandasamy, Kathryn Bolton, & Lixia Yang

15. Culture and Intergroup Emotions | Angela T. Maitner, Diane M. Mackie, & Eliot R. Smith

16. Social Functions of Emotion: A Cultural Perspective | Agneta Fischer & Antony Manstead

17. Mapping Emotion Around the World: Similarities and Differences | Michelle Yik & Ziyue Zhu

18. Cultural Variation in Ideal Affect: Implications for Individual, Interpersonal, and Collective Behavior | Verity Lua, Raphael Uricher, & Jeanne L. Tsai

19. Social and Emotion Norms: Features and Cultural Variation | Cristina E Salvador, Kirby T. Lam, & Mercedes M. Munoz

20. Emotion and Culture in the Human-Nature Relationship | Kim-Pong Tam, Vivien Pong, & Hoi-Wing Chan

21. LeDoux, J. E. (2020). Thoughtful feelings. Current Biology, 30(11), R619-R623.

22. Culture and Emotional Memory: Existing Evidence and Future Directions | Elizabeth A. Kensinger, & Marie Coura Diagne

23. Emotions as Events: Cultural Contributions to Emotion Inference | Maria Gendron & Zhimeng Li

24. Affective Drivers of Risky Decisions: Universal Patterns and Cultural Variations | Amanda Zaidan Chen, Carmen K. Ng, Kin Fai Ellick Wong, & Jessica Y. Y. Kwong

25. Emotion in Voice and Language Across Cultures: A Modern Perspective | Michelle Schlicher, Yupei Li, Mohamed Mady, Sunil Munthumoduku Krishna Murthy, Qiyang Sun, & Björn W. Schuller

26. Emotion and the Language-Culture Nexus | Francesco De Toni & Maïa Ponsonnet

27. Origins and Consequences of Cultural Variation in Emotion Vocabulary | Joshua Conrad Jackson & Kristen Lindquist

28. Culture and Well-Being: Five Empirical Approaches | Madison Montemayor-Dominguez, James Chinn, Stephen Cadieux, & Sonja Lyubomirsky

29. Culture and Subjective Well-Being: Current Trends and Advances | June Kim & Julianna

30. Emotional Intelligence Through a Cultural Lens | Shengjie Lin, James Floman, Zorana Ivcevic, Zhenlan Wang, & Marc Brackett

31. Culture, Emotion Regulation, and its Implications for Health | William Tsai

32. The Cultural Organization of Emotional Disorders: Somatization and Psychologization | Gesa Duden, Yulia E. Chentsova-Dutton, & Andrew G. Ryder

33. Face and Emotion Regulation in Chinese Societies | Frederick T.L. Leong, Lanting Cheng, & SinHui Chong

34. The Emergence of Kama Muta Over Millions of Years, Millenia, Months, and Milliseconds | Alan Page Fiske

35. Shame and Culture | W. Gerrod Parrott

36. Anger: Similarities and Differences Among Cultures | Kinga Szymaniak, Thomas F. Denson, & Eddie Harmon-Jones

37. Culturally Specific Emotions as Reflections of Cultural Values: Amae, Saudade, and Awe | Igor de Almeida & Pamela Taylor

38. Respect through an Emotion Lens: Admiration, Pride, and Fear | Kunalan Manokara, Kerry Kawakami, Catherine Ching Wan, & Agneta Fischer

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(3) Happy Biking Project

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(4) Diary Study

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The subjective experience of affect plays a fundamental role in diverse psychological phenomena. Consequently, understanding how affect is structured is one of the longstanding challenges to the science of psychology. What are the fundamental dimensions that make up affect? Does the nature of these dimensions vary with culture and psychological well-being? Much theory and research have examined the first question, and interest is growing in the second.

Theory and research point to valence and arousal as fundamental dimensions of affect, although the nature of each is yet to be examined. In this proposal, we will focus on valence. In the circumplex model of affect, valence is defined as pleasant versus unpleasant affect (and arousal as activated versus deactivated affect), which implies that happiness and sadness are mutually exclusive. When one is happy, one cannot be sad. Others have argued that happiness and sadness are two separable entities, suggesting that one can feel happy and sad simultaneously. Our project will involve a cross-cultural investigation into the extent to which pleasant and unpleasant affect can coexist in everyday life, using an experience-sampling design.

Recent studies have suggested that pleasant and unpleasant affect can and do co-occur in Eastern but not in Western culture. The positive impact of their co-occurrence on well-being received conflicting evidence. However, those studies used samples that were too small and the subjects were not diverse enough to reach conclusive findings. The investigation should be extended to include larger samples from diverse cultures. More importantly, it needs to be cross-validated with other methods such as the experience-sampling method, which provides a platform on which both state (within-person) and trait (between-person) affect can be examined in everyday life. Such is the purpose of this proposed project.

We will build on an existing research network involving 50 cultures, each of which has already been characterized in important ways in prior research. Data will be gathered from those 50 cultures using surveys administered in Indo-European, Hamito-Semitic, Sino-Tibetan, Daic, Uralic, Malayo-Polynesian, Dravidian, and Altaic languages. These cultures represent six continents and cover the global regions identified by Schwartz (2006), with several samples from within each region to ensure replicability. Specifically, we will estimate the overall relation of psychological well-being to the relationship between pleasant and unpleasant affect, and how much this overall relation varies across cultures. The small number of cultures in previous work did not allow such questions to be properly addressed.

We will also use the empirical findings to test specific theories about the nature of valence and its relationship with culture and other correlates.

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(5) Valence and Arousal Project

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The subjective experience of affect is a central aspect of the mind playing a fundamental role in diverse psychological phenomena. Consequently, understanding how affect is structured is one of the longstanding challenges to the science of psychology. What are the fundamental dimensions underlying affect, how are the dimensions related to each other, and does the relation vary with culture and personality? Much theory and research have examined the first question, little the second, almost none the third. Indeed, the structure of affect is typically assumed to be part of human nature, invariant with culture and personality.

Theory and research point to valence and arousal as fundamental properties of affect, but it remains unclear how valence and arousal relate to each other. Are they independent dimensions, or do they covary? And if they covary, do they do so linearly and in a way that holds for all humans or in a way that varies with culture or personality? Six clearly articulated theoretical relations between valence and arousal have been proposed (or presupposed) in the literature. Our study aims to examine these relations.

Kuppens et al. (2017) examined these six hypotheses on the valence-arousal relation (plus more exploratory analyses for other possible relations) in eight samples. A weak symmetric V-shaped pattern was supported, implying that arousal increases with intensity of valence. We found personality differences such that the V-shape is greater in extraverts, but weakens in introverts, for example. We also found that the steepness of the V-shaped relationship varied with culture, with a steeper slope among the Western cultures (Canada, Spain) than among the Eastern cultures (Korea, Japan). In the Hong Kong sample, the best fitting model was simply a straight line implying the independence of valence and arousal. Although these initial results are encouraging, the samples pertained to too few cultures, and were restricted mostly to English-speaking participants. The investigation needs to be extended to include larger samples within diverse cultures. Such is the purpose of this current study.

With a larger sample of cultures, each with a large sample of individuals, we can test main and interactive effects with multi-level models and explore previously undetected patterns. For example, is the relation of extraversion to the structure of affect robust across cultures? The small number of cultures in our previous work did not allow such questions to be properly addressed. With a larger sample of cultures, we can also correlate culture-level variables (such as Schwartz’s value categories) with parameters of the statistical models.

In this study, we build on an existing cross-cultural research network involving more than 36 countries, each of which has already been characterized in important ways in prior research. These cultures cover the global regions identified by Schwartz (2006) and provide several samples within each region to ensure replicability. We hope to develop firmly grounded theoretical explanations for empirical generalizations on the nature of affect and its relation to personality and culture, once they are established as robust.

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