Research Interests

Research Interests

My research interests have focused on cultural influence on coping mental illnesses and ethical decision-making. I developed and executed a number of research projects among traumatized populations from cross-cultural perspectives. Through working with victims of sexual assault and domestic violence in clinical settings and via tele-health, I noted issues related to cultural differences in ethics and moral standards in clinical practice (Zheng & Gray, 2014). As a result, I incorporated philosophical concepts and developed a project focusing on ethical issues of decision-making by psychologists. Specifically, I applied theories of rule consequentialism and state consequentialism into my investigation on how East-West cultural differences influence ethical decision-making in clinical/counseling psychology. My colleagues and I used the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct to design 20 scenarios about psychologists’ activities pertaining to their scientific and professional roles. We found that American psychologists were more rule-consequentialism-oriented, whereas Chinese psychologists were more state-consequentialism-oriented (Zheng, Gray, Zhu, & Jiang, 2014). This was a pilot study related to ethical and cultural issues in the area of clinical and moral psychology. This project has implications for development of training activities and initiatives associated with the culturally competent issues for psychologists. This work was supported by the Willits Independent Research Award.

As a natural progression of my research, I pursued more projects focusing on cross-cultural issues among clinical populations. In order to evaluate the applicability of Western diagnostic criteria and treatments of PTSD to traumatized individuals in the East, I wrote a review article that analyzed the East-West cultural differences in conceptualization and coping strategies for post-traumatic stress disorder (Zheng & Gray, 2015). In this paper, I compared cultural differences based on holistic and dualistic thinking in the health-related understanding of medicine, religions, and social norms. I also discussed compatible and incompatible aspects of the traditional Chinese health beliefs with Western beliefs about PTSD and examined how culture-based motivations affect emotional responses to event-related adversity between American and Chinese cultures. In a related empirical study, I examined the relationships between cultural worldviews and adversity-related distress. Specifically, this project focused on how the East-West cultural difference variables mediate the relationships between resilience capacity and post-traumatic distress among individuals who experience traumatic events. Those culture-related variables were independent- vs. interdependent-self-construal, dialectical thinking, and familism. This project was the first study focusing on comparisons of resilience capacity among three cultures: American culture, Chinese culture and a bi-culture (Hong Kong). The findings from this project highlighted an in-depth understanding of psychopathology of post-traumatic distress from the perspectives of moral psychology and provided suggestions for development of ethically and culturally competent clinical treatments and coping strategies for traumatized individuals (Zheng et al. 2020). This project was supported by the competitive Ksir Research Fellowship.

In the future, I expect to expand my current research pursuits of the East-West cultural differences in the mechanisms of psychopathology of and coping strategies for adversity-related distress. These topics may include but not limited to 1) help-seeking behavior among trauma survivors; 2) the effect of the self-functioning system on psychopathology of adversity-related distress; 3) the mechanisms of psychological stress related to social media usage; 4) risk and protective factors of sexual assault on campus.

Recent Publications

  • Zheng, P., & Maercker, A. (2021). Resiliency and Posttraumatic Growth: Cultural Implications for Psychiatrists. Psychiatric Times, 38(7), 10–11.

  • Zheng, P., Gray, M. J., Duan, W-J, Ho, S.M.Y, Xia, M., & Clapp, J. D. (2020). An Exploration of the Relationship Between Culture and Resilience Capacity in Trauma Survivors, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 51(6),475-489.

  • Zheng, P., Gray, M. J., Duan, W-J, Ho, S.M.Y, Xia, M., & Clapp, J. D. (2020). Cultural variations in resilience capacity and posttraumatic stress: A tri-cultural comparison, Cross-Cultural Research, 54 (2-3), 273-295.

  • Zheng, P., & Gray, M. J. (2018). Effects of trauma type and emotion on overgeneral autobiographical memory, Journal of Loss and Trauma. 23(7), 559-573.

  • Zheng, P., & Gray, M. J. (2015). Posttraumatic coping and distress: an evaluation of Western conceptualization of trauma and its applicability to Chinese culture, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 46(5): 723-736.

  • Gray, M. J., Hassjia, C. M. Jaconis, M., Barrett, C., Zheng, P., Steinmetz, S., & Thomas, J. (2015). Provision of evidence-based therapies to rural survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault via tele-health: treatment outcomes and clinical training benefits, Training and Education in Professional Psychology, 9(3): 235-241.

  • Zheng, P., Gray, M. J., Zhu, W. Z, & Jiang, G. R. (2014). Influence of culture on ethical decision-making in psychology, Ethics & Behavior, 24 (6): 510-522.

  • Zheng, P., & Gray, M. J. (2014). Telehealth-based therapy connecting rural Mandarin-speaking traumatized clients with a Mandarin-speaking therapist, Clinical Case Studies, 13(6), 514-527.

  • Zheng, P., & Gray, M. J. (2012). Review of the book Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Special Populations: A Cognitive Restructuring Program by Mueser, Rosernberg & Rosenberg. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 4(5), 548–549.

  • Zheng, P., Zhang, J., Liu, H., & Xu, X. (2008). Angelica injection reduces cognitive impairment during chronic cerebral hypoperfusion through brain-derived neurotropic factor and nerve growth factor, Current Neurovascular Research, 5(1), 13-20.

  • Zheng, P. (2008). Psychological stress and DNA damage. Advances in Psychological Science, 16(2), 274-281.

  • Liu, H., Zhang, J., Zheng, P., & Zhang, Y. (2005). Altered expression of MAP-2, GAP-43, and synaptophysin in the hippocampus of rats with chronic cerebral hypo-perfusion correlates with cognitive impairment, Molecular Brain Research, 139(1), 169-77.