About

Qi Wang is the Joan K. and Irwin M. Jacobs professor of human development and psychology at Cornell University. Her research integrates developmental, cognitive, and sociocultural perspectives to examine the mechanisms underlying the development of a variety of social-cognitive skills, including autobiographical memory, self, future thinking, and emotion knowledge. She also studies the impact of the Internet and social media as a cultural force unique to our time on memory, sociocognitive functioning, and well-being. A graduate of Peking University, China, Qi Wang earned a Ph.D. in psychology in 2000 at Harvard University. She has received many honors and awards and has over two hundred publications in scientific journals and volumes of collected works. Her single-authored book, The Autobiographical Self in Time and Culture (2013, OUP), is regarded as a definitive work on culture and autobiographical memory.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Sociology
• Mathematics
• Internal medicine
• Cognitive science
• History
• Psychiatry
• Physical therapy
• Anthropology
• Economics
• Econometrics
• Medicine
• Neuroscience
• Developmental psychology
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• <p class="MDPI13authornames">The Role of Phytohormones and Nanomaterials in Regulating Plant Responses to Abiotic Stress

  Preprints.org · 2026-04-16

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Phytohormones act as key endogenous factors and signalling molecules that mediate abiotic stress responses in plants, and are the integration centres of plant responses to environmental stimuli, playing an important role in plant resistance to drought, salt, cold and other stresses. Stress responses are finely regulated through a complex network of different classes of phytohormone signalling pathways. Many transcription factors are able to regulate the content of endogenous plant hormones by influencing hormone synthesis, metabolic gene and stress-related genes expression, which in turn affects plant growth and development and improves plant tolerance to abiotic stresses. Signaling molecules in plant stress responses, such as abscisic acid (ABA) ethylene (ETH), gibberellin (GA), jasmonic acid (JA) and salicylic acid (SA). Their roles in orchestrating plant responses to abiotic stresses. With global climate change, abiotic disasters have become increasingly frequent in recent years, severely hindering crop growth and development. Nanomaterials have attracted widespread attention from researchers because they can significantly alleviate abiotic stress in crops caused by factors such as salinity, drought, flooding, and heavy metals. This paper reviews recent research progress on the use of plant hormones and nanomaterials to alleviate abiotic stress in plants and elaborates on their underlying mechanisms of action. In the future, we will focus on investigating the roles of plant hormones and nanomaterials in modulating plant responses to abiotic stress, thereby enhancing plant tolerance to such stresses and increasing crop yields to address food security challenges.

  PublisherDOI

• Are influencers more influential? Social endorsement and memory on social media

  Memory · 2025-06-23 · 1 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  = 177) that received large or small numbers of likes. Across all studies, regardless of cultural background and social conformity tendency, social endorsement did not affect memory performance for posted information: Although participants rated profiles with greater social endorsement as more popular, trustworthy, likable, and attractive, they remembered the posted information associated with high and low levels of social endorsement similarly. Participants better remembered negative information (Studies 2 and 4) and information posted by more likable users (Studies 1 and 3). The findings suggest that social endorsement alone, while influencing the perception of profile owners, does not enhance the memorability of the associated information.

  PublisherDOI

• Abnormal intrinsic timescales patterns show the mechanisms of information processing in MDD under emotional state

  International Journal of Psychophysiology · 2025-07-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Relationship‐Defining Memory in the Cultural Context: The Relation to Psychological Well‐Being

  Applied Cognitive Psychology · 2025-03-01 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  ABSTRACT This study examined relationship‐defining memories in the cultural context and how phenomenological characteristics of those memories were related to psychological well‐being. A total of 105 Asian and 108 European American college students (Mage = 20.16 years; 64% women) each recalled a positive and a negative event significant for their relationships with parents and peers, respectively. Participants rated difficulty, affect, and subjective distance in retrieving the memories and reported psychological well‐being. Independent of culture, less recall difficulty and closer subjective distance for positive parent memories were both correlated with better psychological well‐being. As for negative parent memory, culture moderated the relationship between affect and psychological well‐being: More fading affect was correlated with higher well‐being only for Asians but not for European Americans. The phenomenology of peer memory was not significantly associated with psychological well‐being. We discuss the phenomenological characteristics of relationship‐defining memories in relation to psychological well‐being in the cultural context.

  PublisherDOI

• Effectiveness of different medication management measures in older patients with chronic diseases and Polypharmacy: A systematic review and network meta-analysis

  Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy · 2025-05-21 · 4 citations

  review1st author
  PublisherDOI

• Asian Parenting and Emotional Development in a Multi-level Analysis Framework

  2025-02-05 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Parents play a critical role in children’s emotional development and psychological well-being. Cultural values and beliefs shape parenting goals and practices regarding emotion socialization and in turn impact many aspects of emotional development. This chapter applies a multi-level analysis framework (Wang, 2018, 2023) to understanding cultural influences on parental emotion socialization and children’s emotional development at the group, dyadic, individual, situational, and temporal levels. Our analysis reveals the complex and dynamic process in which emotional socialization and development take place at the intersection of the micro-context of family and the macro-context of culture. During the process, Asian parents help children develop emotional competence in line with Asian cultural values of interdependence, social harmony, sensitivity to others’ feelings and needs, and self-restraint. Asian children further play active roles in acquiring Asian cultural knowledge and skills concerning emotion and how it should be experienced, expressed, and regulated. The multi-level analysis framework provides an important guide to understand and study parenting and child development in the cultural context.

  PublisherDOI

• Handling the hype: Demystifying artificial intelligence for memory studies

  Memory Mind & Media · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Artificial Intelligence (AI) has reached memory studies in earnest. This partly reflects the hype around recent developments in generative AI (genAI), machine learning, and large language models (LLMs). But how can memory studies scholars handle this hype? Focusing on genAI applications, in particular so-called ‘chatbots’ (transformer-based instruction-tuned text generators), this commentary highlights five areas of critique that can help memory scholars to critically interrogate AI’s implications for their field. These are: (1) historical critiques that complicate AI’s common historical narrative and historicize genAI; (2) technical critiques that highlight how genAI applications are designed and function; (3) praxis critiques that centre on how people use genAI; (4) geopolitical critiques that recognize how international power dynamics shape the uneven global distribution of genAI and its consequences; and (5) environmental critiques that foreground genAI’s ecological impact. For each area, we highlight debates and themes that we argue should be central to the ongoing study of genAI and memory. We do this from an interdisciplinary perspective that combines our knowledge of digital sociology, media studies, literary and cultural studies, cognitive psychology, and communication and computer science. We conclude with a methodological provocation and by reflecting on our own role in the hype we are seeking to dispel.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Quercetin inhibits silica nanoparticle-induced ferroptosis and inflammation by alleviating oxidative stress and targeting STAT3 in brain

  International Journal of Biological Macromolecules · 2025-10-24

  article1st author
  PublisherDOI

• The Online Extension of Autobiographical Memory

  2025-01-30 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The Internet and social media have afforded individuals with new ways of remembering and sharing personal experiences with others, resulting in a tangible online extension of autobiographical memory with infinite possibilities. This chapter applies the triangular theory of self in the Internet Age to analyzing the characteristics of autobiographical memory and its online extension—in the digital form on social media platforms and in the transactive form in the cyber community—in the digitally mediated society. Taking a psycho-cultural perspective, the analysis shows how psychological characteristics and cultural norms influence the dynamic interaction between the social media user and the cyber community in the process of co-constructing the online extension of autobiographical memory and further affecting individuals’ sense of self and well-being. The chapter concludes with a discussion of limitations in current research, the methodological challenges and strategies in studying autobiographical memory in the age of the Internet and social media, and future directions.

  PublisherDOI

• Self‐esteem mediates the link between subjective family socioeconomic status and daily depressed mood during emerging adulthood: A daily diary study

  Applied Psychology Health and Well-Being · 2025-05-29

  articleOpen access1st author

  BACKGROUND: Previous investigations have demonstrated the link between subjective socioeconomic status and depressed mood. However, the relationship and mechanisms of subjective socioeconomic status with daily depressed mood remain unclear in emerging adulthood. METHODS: This study investigated whether and how family subjective socioeconomic status is associated with depressed mood using a 14-day daily diary design with multilevel modeling. A total of 243 participants (mean age: 19.46 years; 89.7% female) completed the socioeconomic status scale at baseline, followed by the daily self-esteem scale and the daily depressed mood scale over 14 consecutive days. RESULTS: The multilevel regression analysis showed that socioeconomic status negatively predicted individuals' depressed mood (β = -0.24, 95% CI = [-0.31, -0.10], z = -2.85, p = .003). In addition, the 2-1-1 multilevel mediation analysis indicated that self-esteem mediated the association between family subjective socioeconomic status and depressed mood (indirect effect = -0.22, 95% CI = [-0.36, -0.11], p = .002). CONCLUSIONS: The findings of this study suggest that interventions aimed at enhancing self-esteem, such as group counseling activities, may have the potential to reduce depressed mood in emerging adults.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Cultural and Individual Predictors of Autobiographical Memory in Middle Childhood

  NSF · $350k · 2007–2011

• NIH Grant R01MH064661

  NIH · $559k · 2006

Frequent coauthors

• Yubo Hou

  31 shared

• Jessie Bee Kim Koh

  Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen

  16 shared

• Qingfang Song

  Western Kentucky University

  15 shared

• Charles B. Stone

  John Jay College of Criminal Justice

  10 shared

• Nazike Mert

  Cornell University

  9 shared

• Ezgi Bilgin

  New York State University College of Human Ecology

  8 shared

• Carole Peterson

  Memorial University of Newfoundland

  8 shared

• Andrea G. Levitt

  Wellesley College

  8 shared

Labs

• Culture & Cognition LabPI

Education

• B.S., Psychology

  Peking University

• Ph.D., Psychology

  Harvard University