Andrew G. Ryder, PhD

Education

Ph.D. (Clinical Psychology, University of British Columbia)
B.Sc. (Psychology, University of Toronto)

Research interests

I have dual training in clinical psychology and cultural psychology, along with sustained exposure to the interdisciplinary field of transcultural psychiatry. As such, my scholarly work aims to integrate these disciplines, particularly through empirical contributions falling under three broad and interrelated themes. First, I study the cultural shaping of emotions and emotional disorders, with an emphasis on East Asian societies: China, Korea, and Japan. Second, I study the acculturation process and its implications for mental health in migrants to Montreal, focusing in particular on the development of better assessment tools to measure key aspects of acculturation. Third, I study best practices for evidence-based psychological interventions that are transcultural and transdiagnostic. These three themes are united by the subfield of Cultural-Clinical Psychology, which I am helping to develop and promote through collaborative conceptual work.

Undergraduate Teaching

Cultural Psychology (PSYC424)
Cultural-Clinical Psychology (PSYC428)

Graduate Teaching

Cultural-Clinical Psychology (PSYC721)
Advanced Clinical Seminar II (PSYC837)

Cultural Shaping of Emotions and Emotional Disorders

• Somatic vs. psychological symptom presentations in China, Korea, Canada, and the United States.
• Change in depression symptom presentation over recent decades in China.
• Social anxiety in Japan and Canada.
• Lay beliefs about mental illness in China, Japan, and Canada.
• Cultural values and alexithymia.

Acculturation and Adaptation to Montreal

• Trajectories of acculturation and adaptation in the first year of settlement.
• Development of the 'acculturation toolkit' for research and clinical assessment.
• Daily fluctuations in cultural identity and emotion.
• The interrelation of cultural learning and language learning.
• Linguistic and cultural barriers to mental healthcare access.

Transcultural and Transdiagnostic Evidence-Based Psychological Interventions

• Best practices for evidence-based psychological interventions in contexts with high levels of cultural and linguistic diversity.
• Best practices for training and supervision in transcultural, transdiagnostic psychological interventions.

Cultural-Clinical Psychology

• Conceptual underpinnings of cultural-clinical psychology.
• Emergence of psychopathology in culture-mind-brain.
• Culturally-aware psychotherapeutic interventions.

Lead-Author Publications

Ryder, A. G., Doucerain, M. M., Dere, J., Jurcik, T., Zhou, B., & Zhou, X. (2021). On dynamic contexts and unstable categories: Steps towards a cultural-clinical psychology. In M. Gelfand, C.-Y. Chiu, & Y.-Y. Hong (Eds), Advances in culture and psychology, volume 8 (pp. 195-245). Oxford University Press.

Ryder, A. G., Sunohara, M., Dere, J., & Chentsova-Dutton, Y. E. (2018). The cultural shaping of alexithymia. In O. Luminet, R. M. Bagby, & G. Taylor (Eds), Alexithymia: A disorder of affect regulation. Cambridge University Press.

Ryder, A. G., & Chentsova-Dutton, Y. E. (2015). Cultural-Clinical Psychology: From cultural scripts to contextualized treatments. In L. J. Kirmayer, R. Lemelson, & C. A. Cummings (Eds.), Revisioning psychiatry: Cultural phenomenology, critical neuroscience, and global mental health (pp.400-433). Cambridge University Press.    

Ryder, A. G., Ban, L. M., & Chentsova-Dutton, Y. E. (2011). Towards a cultural-clinical psychology. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 5, 960-975.

Ryder, A. G., Yang, J., Zhu, X., Yao, S., Yi, J., Heine, S. J., & Bagby, R. M. (2008). The cultural shaping of depression: Somatic symptoms in China, psychological symptoms in North America? Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 117, 300-313.

Ryder, A. G., Alden, L. E., & Paulhus, D. L. (2000). Is acculturation unidimensional or bidimensional? A head-to-head comparison in the prediction of personality, self-identity, and adjustment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 49-65.

Supervised Publications

Zhao, Y., Segalowitz, N., Voloshyn, A., Chamoux, E., & Ryder, A. G. (2021) Language barriers to healthcare for linguistic minorities: The case of second language-specific health communication anxiety. Health Communication, 36, 334-346.

Jurcik, T., Sunohara, M., Yakobov, E., Solopieieva-Jurcikova, L., Ahmed, R., & Ryder, A. G. (2019). Acculturation and adjustment of migrants reporting trauma: The contextual effects of perceived ethnic density. Journal of Community Psychology, 47, 1313-1328.

Vargas, S. M., Dere, J., Garcia, L., & Ryder, A. G. (2019). The role of cultural values in the folk psychiatry explanatory framework: A comparison of Chinese- and Euro-Canadians. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 50, 703-707.

Doucerain, M. M., Deschênes, S. S., Gouin, J.-P., Amiot, C. E., & Ryder, A. G. (2016). Initial mainstream cultural orientations predict early social participation in the mainstream cultural group. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43, 245-258.

Zhou, X., Peng, Y., Zhu, X., Yao, S., Dere, J., Chentsova-Dutton, Y. E., & Ryder, A. G. (2016). From culture to symptom: Testing a structural model of “Chinese somatization”. Transcultural Psychiatry, 53, 3-23.

Zhou, B., Lacroix, F., Sasaki, J., Peng, Y., Wang, X., & Ryder, A. G. (2014). Unpacking cultural variations in social anxiety and the offensive-type of Taijin Kyofusho through the indirect effects of intolerance of uncertainty and self-construals. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 45, 1561-1578.

Dere, J., Tang, Q., Zhu, X., Cai, L., Yao, S., & Ryder, A. G. (2013). The cultural shaping of alexithymia: Values and externally-oriented thinking in a Chinese clinical sample. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 54, 362-368.