He uses cross-cultural comparisons to reveal basic psychological processes that would otherwise go undetected. He has conducted extensive work on how merely thinking about one’s day to day choices and decisions influences people’s judgments about important issues (e.g., wealth inequality); how believing whether nearly everyone vs. only some people have intellectual or moral potential influences people’s attitudes and behaviors (e.g., how likely they are to cheat); and whether adjusting to a new culture is more a matter of implicitly picking up complex patterns rather than carefully learning new rules and customs.