Susan E. Cross is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Iowa State University. Her research focuses on the intersection of culture, self, and relationships. She began her career studying the self, as well as gender and cultural variation in self-construal.
More recently, in partnership with Ayşe K. Üskül and others, she has focused on the questions “What is honour, and why is it so important in some cultural contexts?” With funding from the US National Science Foundation, Cross and her colleagues have sought to examine how people conceptualize the construct of honour, and they have examined honour-related processes that explain cultural differences in aggression, affect, motivation, and social judgment.
Susan E. Cross is also curious about how cultural beliefs and values shape processes in close relationships, with a focus on East Asians.
With several graduate students, she has investigated how cognitive processes (such as dialecticism) and cultural values (such as filial piety) explain East-West differences in the priority of parent vs. spousal relationships, the evaluation of romantic partners, and perceptions of the malleability vs. stability of relationship partners.
Dr Cross has served as an Associate Editor of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and she is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.