About

Hazel Rose Markus is the Davis-Brack Professor in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, with a primary focus on the role of self in regulating behavior and the influence of the social world on the self. Her research examines how various cultural factors—including nation or region of origin, gender, social class, race, ethnicity, religion, and occupation—shape thought, feeling, and action. Her work aims to understand the social and cultural mechanisms that influence individual behavior and societal outcomes, contributing to fields such as social psychology, cultural psychology, and education. Her scholarly contributions include investigating how social identities and cultural contexts impact psychological experiences and behaviors, as well as exploring strategies for fostering cultural inclusion and equity in educational and social systems. Markus's research also addresses issues related to racial disparities, social class differences, and the development of interventions to promote inclusive practices and reduce bias in various societal domains.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Social Science
• Sociology
• Law
• Mathematics
• Mathematical analysis
• Economics
• Public relations
• Psychiatry
• Pedagogy
• Clinical psychology
• Criminology
• Medicine
• Mathematics education

Selected publications

• The Cycle of Hate, and What We Can Do About It

  The World Bank Open Knowledge Repository (World Bank) · 2026-02-09

  reportOpen access

  Intergroup hate—both shaped by and shaping development processes—is spreading worldwide as hate speech becomes normalized, hate groups proliferate, and political discourse increasingly frames opponents as enemies rather than as partners in compromise. Drawing on historical, economic, political, and social-psychological research, this paper synthesizes 10 drivers of intergroup hate into four interlocking components: history, current context, call to arms, and justification of mistreatment. These components form a self-reinforcing cycle that escalates animosity and legitimizes harm, making hate difficult—but not impossible—to disrupt. The paper shows how the 10 drivers interact over time and uses the cycle of hate framework to organize evidence from experiments and program evaluations aimed at reducing intergroup animosity. This evidence indicates that intergroup hate can be interrupted at multiple points through coordinated psychosocial, institutional, and economic interventions. By contrast, policies that neglect any of the four components—particularly elite and media mobilization—consistently underperform. Context sensitive, integrated, institutionally embedded strategies hold the greatest promise, including the potential to support inoculation and early-warning systems that detect and counter intergroup hate before it is politically mobilized.

  Publisher

• How culturally wise psychological interventions can help reduce poverty

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2025-11-13 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Poverty is characterized by multidimensional economic, social, and psychological constraints that undermine people’s agency to pursue new opportunities and shape their life outcomes. How can interventions best support the agency of low-income individuals and, in so doing, boost poverty-reduction efforts? We theorize and find that agency interventions are effective when designed to be “culturally wise,” i.e., attuned to the model of agency predominant in a cultural context. Focusing on low-income women in rural Niger, Study 1 finds that local mental models of economic success primarily reflect interdependence, grounded in relational factors like advancing social harmony, respectfulness, and collective benefits. As evidenced by data from a United States sample, this contrasts with a more independent model common in the West grounded in personal factors like self-initiative. Study 2 finds empirical support for relational factors (e.g., subjective social standing) in addition to self-oriented personal factors (e.g., self-efficacy) as mechanisms of women’s economic advancement in a highly effective multifaceted poverty reduction program. Study 3 reports a field experiment with program participants (n = 2,628) to compare a Western-derived personal agency intervention and a culturally wise relational agency intervention each to a control. Only relational agency caused significant improvements in economic outcomes over 12 mo, as well as in some personal and relational outcomes. By contrast, personal agency showed limited effects, shifting only personal outcomes. These findings reveal the promise of research at the intersection of social and cultural psychology, behavioral science, and development economics to help address global poverty.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How U.S. ‘cultural defaults’ challenge American public health and what public health officers can do about it

  SSM - Population Health · 2025-03-29

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  As practitioners and scientists reflect on what can be learned from COVID, we argue that cultural defaults-commonsense, rational, and taken-for-granted ways of thinking, feeling, and acting -played an important role in how countries responded to the pandemic, and help explain why the United States suffered 4-6 times more deaths per 100,000 people compared to the East Asian countries of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Drawing on a recent review and theoretical integration, we describe six pairs of contrasting cultural defaults that were common in how the U.S. and some East Asian nations responded to the pandemic: (1) optimism-uniqueness vs. realism-similarity, (2) single vs. multiple causes, (3) expression of high vs. low arousal emotions, (4) influence-control vs. wait-adjust, (5) personal choice-self-regulation vs. social choice-social regulation, and (6) promotion vs. prevention. These historically-derived defaults are often outside of individual awareness, but are reflected in and reinforced by institutional practices and policies, the media, and everyday interactions. They are infused with cultural values, understood as the "right way" to be or behave, and are adaptive in their respective contexts. Importantly, both constellations of cultural defaults are viable depending on the problem to be solved. We then provide six specific ways in which public health officers might productively consider these and other cultural defaults when preparing for the next crisis and planning how to effectively motivate people to protect their own and others' health. Our hope is to facilitate efforts to include a focus on culture within the scope of the social determinants of health and to encourage more partnerships between behavioral scientists and public health practitioners. Recognizing the cultural defaults of the various "publics" they seek to protect is critical as U.S. public health officers aim to promote health for all, a significant and complex challenge in the increasingly individualistic U.S.

  PublisherDOI

• Is There an “I” in Team?: Racial and Gender Differences in Interdependent Teamwork

  2025-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The popular adage “There's no ‘I’ in team" aims to encourage Americans to place the team’s needs ahead of their individual goals, which research shows is essential to effective team functioning (Wageman et al., 2012). However, do Americans actually follow this recommendation in practice? Decades of research in cultural psychology has consistently shown that our cultural contexts (e.g., race, gender, and nation of origin) thoroughly influence the degree to which individuals hold independent (i.e., focus on one’s unique goals and preferences) and/or interdependent (i.e., focus on the needs of others and the environment) models of self and personhood (Markus & Connor, 2014). More recently, these cultural contexts have been found to influence our relationality (i.e., the interpersonal level of functioning) in important ways (Carey & Markus, 2017). While these cultural processes are theorized to influence our teamwork–an important element of interpersonal functioning–few studies have shown how cultural contexts like race and gender impact how individuals engage in teamwork. Thus, the present study tested whether the use of influencing (e.g., “influence others with your ideas”) and adjusting (e.g., “adjust your views to fit with others”) strategies might vary depending on one’s cultural contexts of race and gender. In a large, diverse sample of college students (N = 599), we found the predicted main effect of gender, such that women use adjusting strategies more and influencing strategies less than men. Contrary to our hypothesis, the predicted main effect of race was not significant, with White identifying participants endorsing influencing and adjusting strategies to the same degree as Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) participants. When asked to forecast their future teamwork strategies, we found that the majority of BIPOC women chose adjusting strategies (58%), while the majority of White women, BIPOC men and White men all chose influencing strategies in a forced choice scenario. These findings confirm our prediction that race and gender cultural contexts may drive some groups to act more independently by influencing others during teamwork, and other groups to act more interdependently by adjusting to others. Based on this study, only some racial and gender groups adhere to the popular adage “There is no ‘I’ in team.” In increasingly diverse workplaces, teams will consist of individuals with different values, practices, and expectations around teamwork–leading to potential culture clashes and team inefficiencies. Yet our findings also show that all groups used both influencing and adjusting strategies to some extent, suggesting these approaches are not mutually exclusive and can be cultivated across identity groups. By highlighting the presence of group differences in organizational settings, we aim to develop a set of practical, identity-specific strategies that lead to better teamwork outcomes for increasingly diverse classrooms and workplaces.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• People who share encounters with racism are silenced online by humans and machines, but a guideline-reframing intervention holds promise

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2024-09-09 · 14 citations

  articleOpen access

  Are members of marginalized communities silenced on social media when they share personal experiences of racism? Here, we investigate the role of algorithms, humans, and platform guidelines in suppressing disclosures of racial discrimination. In a field study of actual posts from a neighborhood-based social media platform, we find that when users talk about their experiences as targets of racism, their posts are disproportionately flagged for removal as toxic by five widely used moderation algorithms from major online platforms, including the most recent large language models. We show that human users disproportionately flag these disclosures for removal as well. Next, in a follow-up experiment, we demonstrate that merely witnessing such suppression negatively influences how Black Americans view the community and their place in it. Finally, to address these challenges to equity and inclusion in online spaces, we introduce a mitigation strategy: a guideline-reframing intervention that is effective at reducing silencing behavior across the political spectrum.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A leadership-level culture cycle intervention changes teachers’ culturally inclusive beliefs and practices

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2024-06-10 · 15 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Despite an abundance of support for culturally inclusive learning environments, there is little consensus regarding how to change educational contexts to effectively and sustainably foster cultural inclusion. To address this gap, we report findings from a research-practice partnership that leveraged the Culture Cycle Framework (CCF) to expand educators' praxis to include both independent and interdependent models of self. Most U.S. schools validate independent cultural models (i.e., those that prioritize individuality, uniqueness, and personal agency) and overlook interdependent models (i.e., those that prioritize connectedness, relationality, and collective well-being), which are more common among students from marginalized racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. Using a quasi-experimental longitudinal design, we trained school leadership to integrate ideas about cultural inclusion (i.e., validating the importance of both independent and interdependent cultural models) into school-wide flagship practices. We assessed downstream indicators of culture change by surveying teachers and students across the district and found that a) leadership-level training enhanced school-wide beliefs about cultural inclusion, b) teachers' endorsement of culturally inclusive beliefs predicted their use of culturally inclusive practices, and c) teachers' use of culturally inclusive practices predicted enhanced psychosocial and academic outcomes among students. This research represents a comprehensive culture change effort using the CCF and illustrates a means of fostering inclusion-focused educational culture change and assessing downstream consequences of culture change initiatives.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• “When the Cruiser Lights Come On”: Using the Science of Bias & Culture to Combat Racial Disparities in Policing

  Daedalus · 2024-01-01 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract In this essay, we highlight the interplay between individuals' psychological processes and sociocultural systems in producing and maintaining racial bias. We use a conceptual tool we call the culture cycle to map these dynamics, and illustrate them with research and in-depth examples from our work reducing racial disparities in routine policing in Oakland, California. We feature the most common police encounter – the vehicle stop – and highlight evidence-based interventions we developed both to reduce the frequency of vehicle stops and mitigate racial disparities in stops. Throughout, we draw on our expertise in the social psychology of bias, culture, and inequality, as well as our experiences building research-driven partnerships with public- and private-sector leaders, to inform organizational and societal change.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Who feels they contribute to U.S. society? Helping behaviors and social class disparities in perceived contributions.

  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · 2024-10-01 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author

  inequality, in part, because some of the forms of help that are most accessible, familiar, and practiced are widely perceived as less of a contribution. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Cultural Defaults in the Time of COVID: Lessons for the Future

  Psychological Science in the Public Interest · 2024-10-01 · 13 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Five years after the beginning of the COVID pandemic, one thing is clear: The East Asian countries of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea outperformed the United States in responding to and controlling the outbreak of the deadly virus. Although multiple factors likely contributed to this disparity, we propose that the culturally linked psychological defaults ("cultural defaults") that pervade these contexts also played a role. Cultural defaults are commonsense, rational, taken-for-granted ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. In the United States, these cultural defaults include optimism and uniqueness, single cause, high arousal, influence and control, personal choice and self-regulation, and promotion. In Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, these defaults include realism and similarity, multiple causes, low arousal, waiting and adjusting, social choice and social regulation, and prevention. In this article, we (a) synthesize decades of empirical research supporting these unmarked defaults; (b) illustrate how they were evident in the announcements and speeches of high-level government and organizational decision makers as they addressed the existential questions posed by the pandemic, including "Will it happen to me/us?" "What is happening?" "What should I/we do?" and "How should I/we live now?"; and (c) show the similarities between these cultural defaults and different national responses to the pandemic. The goal is to integrate some of the voluminous literature in psychology on cultural variation between the United States and East Asia particularly relevant to the pandemic and to emphasize the crucial and practical significance of meaning-making in behavior during this crisis. We provide guidelines for how decision makers might take cultural defaults into account as they design policies to address current and future novel and complex threats, including pandemics, emerging technologies, and climate change.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How Culturally Wise Psychological Interventions Help Reduce Poverty

  Washington, DC: World Bank eBooks · 2024-06-28 · 5 citations

  bookOpen access

  Poverty is multidimensional, associated not only with a lack of financial resources, but also often social-psychological constraints, such as diminished agency and aspirations. Through a series of field experiments, this paper assesses the causal impacts of culturally wise interventions designed to build women’s agency on poverty reduction efforts in rural Niger. Moreover, the study identifies a model of agency that is “culturally wise” because it is the most motivational and functional in the study cultural context. Study 1 reports descriptive evidence that an interdependent model of agency—that is grounded in social harmony, respect, and collective advancement and that accounts for relational affordances for individual goals—is predominant in rural Niger. This stands in contrast to a more self-oriented, independent model grounded in personal aspirations, self-direction, and self-advancement that is more common in the West. Study 2 explores the psychosocial mechanisms of a highly effective, multifaceted poverty reduction program that included two psychosocial interventions—a community sensitization and a life skills training, which incorporated both models of agency. Although the results support the role of intrapersonal processes (including enhanced self-efficacy and optimistic future expectations) in driving economic impacts, there is equal, if not greater, support for relational processes (including increased subjective social standing, control over earnings, and social support). Study 3 conducts a mechanism experiment to disentangle the causal effects of interventions grounded in independent agency (“personal initiative”) or interdependent agency (“interpersonal initiative”). The results show that the interdependent agency intervention, which is considered to be most “culturally wise,” led to significant effects on economic outcomes as well as both intrapersonal and relational processes. By contrast, the independent agency intervention showed impacts on intrapersonal processes alone. These findings show the promise of an emerging area of research at the intersection of behavioral science, cultural psychology, and development economics for addressing complex global problems like poverty and inequality.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Choice as an Engine of Individualism: When and Why is Choice Beneficial or Detrimental in Three Cultural Contexts

  NSF · $500k · 2009–2015

• NIH Grant R01AG008279

  NIH · $1.1M · 1996

Frequent coauthors

• Shinobu Kitayama

  49 shared

• Alia J. Crum

  Stanford University

  43 shared

• Jennifer L. Eberhardt

  43 shared

• Lauren C. Howe

  Swiss Finance Institute

  36 shared

• Emerson J. Hardebeck

  Antioch University Seattle

  36 shared

• Carol D. Ryff

  Institute on Aging

  30 shared

• Nicole M. Stephens

  Northwestern University

  26 shared

• Mayumi Karasawa

  Tokyo Woman's Christian University

  22 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Psychology

  University of Michigan