Headed by Masaki Yuki, Ph.D., the Social Ecology & Psychology Lab at Hokkaido University explores how the nature of societies (the social ecologies) that surround us affect the way we think, feel, and behave – cross-cultural, international, inter-society and inter-temporal comparisons are all part of our research toolkit.

Among a number of societal variables, we predominantly focus on the effect of “relational mobility,” a factor pertaining to the degree of freedom to which individuals in a society can select new, and server old, interpersonal relationships and social groups.

We test how relational mobility may affect psychological tendencies among individuals, embedded in their respective social ecologies, by using multiple methods varying from cross-national, cross-regional, cross-situational, and experimental studies.