Doctoral Candidate
Ph.D. Expected 2013, Social Psychology, UW Madison
M.S. 2008, Social Psychology, UW Madison
B.S. 2003, Psychology and Languages, UC Riverside

Area: Social
Advisor: Dr. Yuri Miyamoto

I am a fifth-year doctoral candidate being advised by Dr. Yuri Miyamoto in the Culture and Cognition Lab here at the University of Wisconsin -Madison. Primarily, I am interested in how East-West cultural and religious differences in cognition influence individuals' attitudes, behaviors, and emotions.

Specifically, in one line of research that I am conducting in collaboration with my advisor and Drs. Heejung Kim at the University of California-Santa Barbara, and Yukiko Uchida at Kyoto University, I am investigating the influence that East-West cultural differences in dialectical cognition have on the consistency of people's preferences and actual choice behaviors both at the individual and collective levels.

In another line of research that I am conducting in collaboration with my advisor and Drs. Lyn Abramson and Richard Davidson here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I am exploring how cultural and religious differences in cognition shape the ways in which we regulate our emotions (through practices such as mindfulness meditation and Beck's Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, for example).

In my dissertation and in future research more broadly, I plan to continue integrating social and clinical approaches to find out exactly how East-West cultural and religious differences in cognition shape the ways in which we regulate our emotions.


Wilken, B., Miyamoto, Y., & Uchida, Y. (2011). Cultural influences on preference consistency: Consistency at the individual and collective levels. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 21, 346-353.[pdf]

Miyamoto, Y., & Wilken, B. (2011). Cultural differences and their mechanisms. In D. Reisberg (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Psychology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc [pdf]

Miyamoto, Y., & Wilken, B. (2010). Culturally contingent situated cognition: Influencing others fosters analytic perception in the U.S. but not in Japan. Psychological Science [pdf]


Wilken, B., Kim, H., & Miyamoto, Y. (2012). Choice consistency and the role of context across cultures.


Wilken, B., Abramson, L., Miyamoto, Y., & Davidson, R. (2012). Buddhist mindfulness meditation and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A cultural analysis.

Wilken, B., & Miyamoto, Y. (2012). Emotion regulation across cultures: The role of attentional processes.

Wilken, B., & Miyamoto, Y. (2012). When does doing nothing help with emotions?: Religion, emotion regulation, and depression.