Emi Kashima's research interests broadly concern cultural adaptation, and she takes two main approaches in her research. The first approach focuses on cross-cultural adaptation of immigrants and sojourners. When crossing the boundaries of culture people are required to learn novel cultural norms in order to build new social relations and engage in the activities in the new communities. How do newcomers learn the complex cultural norms and rules rapidly, and even without a teacher or a guidebook to aid them? Who are more flexible than others and why? How does social networks developed in the new society facilitate or hinder culture learning? These questions are investigated by using survey and experimental methods.

The second approach concerns psychological threat reaction. When exposed to mild threats such as thinking about own limitations and own mortality, individuals engage in implicit self-regulatory processes to cope with the impacts of threats. By using behavioural, cognitive, and neuroscience methods, her research clarifies the roles of various psychological and sociocultural factors in threat regulation, such as shared cultural meanings, mindset, language use, and social ties.