Prof. Jonathan de la Cerna attended and presented his research paper entitled “The Pain in Serving Others: Compassion Fatigue in the Hospitality and Industry” at the 13th Biennial Asian Association of Social Psychology (AASP) at the Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan on July 11-13, 2019. It was funded by UP Cebu Research Dissemination Grant amounting to Php 25,000.00.
The main theme of the 13th Biennial Asian Association of Social Psychology (AASP) is “Consolidating the future of Culture-Oriented Psychology: Progress and achievements”. This conference was aimed at making deep reflections on both theoretical and empirical developments and hope to bring innovative integrations on different psychological perspectives in order to consolidate future directions Asian social psychology.
There were a lot of advancement in the Asian Social Psychology that were highlighted in the conference. One of this is the work of Kitayama on neuroscience and culture. Another one is the legacy of Triandis who is considered to be the father of Cross-Cultural Psychology. Triandis just recently died, and he is a great lost to the field. Michele Gelfand presented a tribute to Triandis by discussing what has been done in the field and the future that lies.
Another interesting topic presented in the conference was on “WEIRD” subjects. This was timely topic for researchers who would like to be critical in the samples they used in their studies. WEIRD stands for Westerners, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic countries which characterize most researchers over the past century. This discussion encourages studying for unusually explored sample which I think is very applicable to marginalized population in the Philippines.