Dr. Kevin Nanakdewa is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the Ivey Business School. Prior to joining Ivey, he was an Assistant Professor of Management at Peking University. His research areas include choice, bias in hiring, workplace gossip, diversity in organizations, judgment and decision making, and culture.
Dr. Nanakdewa’s research has been published in influential academic and practitioner journals such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Harvard Business Review.
He teaches Negotiations in the HBA and MBA program at Ivey.
Before pursuing an academic career, Dr. Nanakdewa was a Marketing Consultant at Nielsen in Toronto working with clients including Coca-Cola, SC Johnson, and Energizer.
-
Salvador, C. E.; Idrovo Carlier, S.; Ishii, K.; Torres Castillo, C.; Nanakdewa, K.; San Martin, A.; Savani, K.; Kitayama, S., 2024, "Emotionally expressive interdependence in Latin America: Triangulating through a comparison of three cultural zones.", Emotion, October 24(3): 820 - 835.
Abstract: Evidence suggests that Latin Americans display elevated levels of emotional expressivity and positivity. Here, we tested whether Latin Americans possess a unique form of interdependence called expressive interdependence, characterized by the open expression of positive emotions related to social engagement (e.g., feelings of closeness to others). In Study 1, we compared Latin Americans from Chile and Mexico with European Americans in the United States, a group known to be highly independent. Latin Americans expressed positive socially engaging emotions, particularly in response to negative events affecting others, whereas European Americans favored positive socially disengaging emotions, such as pride, especially in response to personally favorable circumstances. Study 2 replicated these findings with another group of Latin Americans from Colombia and European Americans in the United States. Study 2 also included Japanese in Japan, who expressed positive emotions less than Latin and European Americans. However, Japanese displayed a higher tendency to express negative socially engaging emotions, such as guilt and shame, compared to both groups. Our data demonstrate that emotional expression patterns align with overarching ethos of interdependence in Latin America and Japan and independence among European Americans. However, Latin Americans and Japanese exhibited different styles of interdependence. Latin Americans were expressive of positive socially engaging emotions, whereas Japanese were less expressive overall. Moreover, when Japanese expressed emotions, they emphasized negative socially engaging emotions. Implications for theories of culture and emotion are discussed
Link(s) to publication:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0001302
-
Kitayama, S.; Salvador, C. E.; Nanakdewa, K.; Rossmaier, A.; San Martin, A.; Savani, K., 2022, "Varieties of interdependence and the emergence of the Modern West: Toward the globalizing of psychology.", American Psychologist, December 77(9): 991 - 1006.
Abstract: Cultural psychology—the research field focusing on the mutual constitution of culture and the mind—has made great strides by documenting robust cultural variations in how people think, feel, and act. The cumulative evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that Westerners are independent, whereas those in the rest of the world are interdependent. Although this research traditionally examined North Americans and East Asians, recent research has extended this literature to other non-Western regions. We review this emerging research and describe four distinct forms of interdependence in four non-Western cultural zones. Specifically, interdependence is promoted through (a) conflict avoidance (dominant in much of East Asia), (b) self-assertion for ingroup protection (dominant in Arab regions), (c) expression of emotions that promote interpersonal resonance (dominant in Latin America), and (d) argumentation for conflict resolution (dominant in South Asia). Furthermore, we propose that the Modern West adopted the existing signature features of interdependence in the neighboring cultural zones (notably, self-assertion, emotional expression, and argumentation) and redefined the psychological function and social meaning of these features; instead of promoting interdependence, they became means to achieve independence. This theoretical integration suggests that cultural variation in basic psychological processes emerged over the last several 1,000 years under the influence of ecology, migration, and intergroup relations. The current effort underscores the need to globalize psychological science
Link(s) to publication:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/amp0001073
-
Madan, S.; Nanakdewa, K.; Savani, K.; Markus, H. R., 2021, "Research: What Makes Employees Feel Empowered to Speak Up?", Harvard Business Review
Abstract: Most managers understand that empowering employees to voice their opinions can help companies innovate and uncover their own shortcomings. However, this understanding does not seem to translate into action. Research shows that over 85% of employees remain silent on crucial matters because they worry about being viewed negatively. How can managers encourage employees to speak their minds at work? The authors’ new research identified a novel method to encourage employees to exercise their voice: creating a company culture that emphasizes the idea of choice. They found that employees were more likely to share their ideas and opinions at a company whose culture emphasized the idea that people always have a choice.
-
Nanakdewa, K.; Madan, S.; Savani, K.; Markus, H. R., 2021, "The salience of choice fuels independence: Implications for self-perception, cognition, and behavior", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, July 118(30)
Abstract: More than ever before, people across the world are exposed to ideas of choice and have opportunities to make choices. What are the consequences of this rapidly expanding exposure to the ideas and practice of choice? The current research investigated an unexamined and potentially powerful consequence of this salience of choice: an awareness and experience of independence. Four studies (n = 1,288) across three cultural contexts known to differ in both the salience of choice and the cultural emphasis on independence (the United States, Singapore, and India) provided converging evidence of a link between the salience of choice and independence. Singaporean students who recalled choices rather than actions represented themselves as larger than their peers (study 1). Conceptually replicating this finding, study 2 found that Americans who recalled choices rather than actions rated themselves as physically stronger. In a word/nonword lexical decision task (study 3), Singaporean students who recalled choices rather than actions were quicker at identifying independence-related words, but not neutral or interdependence-related words. Americans, Singaporeans, and Indians all indicated that when working in an organization that emphasized choice, they would be more likely to express their opinions. Similarly, Americans, Singaporeans, and Indians reported a preference for working in such an organization (studies 4a and 4b). The findings suggest that the salience of personal choice may drive an awareness and experience of independence even in contexts where, unlike in the United States, independence has not been the predominant ethos. Choice may be an unmarked and proximate mechanism of cultural change and growing global individualism.
Link(s) to publication:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2021727118
-
Madan, S.; Nanakdewa, K.; Savani, K.; Markus, H. R., 2020, "The Paradoxical Consequences of Choice: Often Good for the Individual, Perhaps Less So for Society?", Current Directions in Psychological Science, February 29(1): 80 - 85.
Abstract: The proliferation of products and services, together with the rise of social media, affords people the opportunity to make more choices than ever before. However, the requirement to think in terms of choice, or to use a choice mind-set, may have powerful but unexamined consequences for judgment and decision making, both for the chooser and for others. A choice mind-set leads people to engage in cognitive processes of discrimination and separation, to emphasize personal freedom and independent agency, and to focus on themselves rather than others. Reviewing research from social psychology, legal studies, health and nutrition, and consumer behavior, we found evidence that although a choice mind-set may have positive consequences for the individual, the accumulated outcome of thinking in terms of individual choice may have detrimental outcomes for society. Given the prevalence of choice in all domains of life, more research examining the full range of the consequences of choice is urgently needed.
Link(s) to publication:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0963721419885988
For more publications please see our Research Database
