Graduate Student
M.S. 2008, Social Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison
B.S. 2003, Psychology and Languages, University of California, Riverside

Area: Social
Advisor: Yuri Miyamoto

I am a third-year graduate student working with Dr. Yuri Miyamoto in the Culture and Cognition Lab. Very generally, I am fascinated by how our cultures shape our ways of thinking and behaving, and how our ways of thinking and behaving help to shape our cultures. In my research so far, I have investigated two specific questions through a series of projects: what cultural mechanisms motivate us to make the consistent choices that we make, and how do the culturally specific ways in which we perceive the world influence our communications with each other? I spent this past summer in Japan as part of an NSF fellowship, where I continued my work in these lines of research with Drs. Sakiko Yoshikawa and Yukiko Uchida at Kyoto University. In the future, I plan to incorporate a social influence perspective into these investigations to examine more interactive processes that occur within the context of communication.


Miyamoto, Y., Wilken, B., & Kitayama, S. (2009). Interpersonal Consequences of Holistic Cognition. Manuscript in Progress.

Miyamoto, Y., & Wilken, B. (2009). Cultural Differences. In D. Reisberg (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Psychology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc. Chapter in Preparation.

Wilken, B., & Kim, H. (2009). Choice Consistency and the Role of Context across Cultures. Manuscript in Review.

Wilken, B., Miyamoto, Y., & Uchida, Y. (2009). The Road to Preference Consistency across Cultures: Identity Expression and Preference Domain. Manuscript in Review.