Andy received his BA in psychology at York University in 2007 and his MA in social and personality psychology at York University in 2010. Andy is currently in his third year of the doctoral program in social and personality psychology at York University with a focus on cultural psychology. Andy's primary supervisor is Dr. Michaela Hynie, but he has also begun collaborations with Dr. Jennifer Steele and Dr. Joni Sasaki (York University), Dr. Adam Cohen (Western University), as well as Dr. Peter Darke (Schulich School of Business).

The goal of Andy’s research program is to further our understanding of cultural differences and similarities in human thoughts and actions. With his supervisor, Andy investigated how attitudinal ambivalence functioned differently in different cultural contexts in his Master’s thesis (Ng, Hynie, & MacDonald, in press). Consistent with previous research on cultural differences in tolerance for contradictory information, results indicated that whereas Canadians of European descent demonstrated increased degree of attitude change when they were ambivalent than when they were not, Canadians of East Asian descent did not exhibit this tendency.

In collaboration with Dr. Jennifer Steele, Andy has been examining how memory can be affected by culturally situated motivational factors. In one specific research project, Andy investigated cultural differences in face recognition for novel targets who belong to different racial categories (Ng, Williams & Steele, 2011; Ng, Steele, Sakamoto, & Williams, under review). Consistent with previous research on cultural differences in the conception of ingroups, results indicated that culture moderated the relationship between interdependence and face recognition accuracy for novel targets of the same race, such that this relationship was significantly positive for European Canadians, but significantly negative for East Asian Canadians. In addition to cultural psychology, Andy is also interested in pursuing research in stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination.

Ng, A., Hynie, M., & MacDonald, T. (in press). Culture Moderates the Pliability of Ambivalent Attitudes. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology

Ng, A., Williams, A., & Steele, J. R. (2011, January). Will you remember me? Culture moderates the relationship between interdependence and face recognition. Manuscript under review.