Culture and Attention: Comparing the Context Sensitivity between East Asians and Westerners

1. Workshop with Professor Cook: Feb 17, 2005 Culture and Attention:Comparing the Context Sensitivity between East Asians and Westerners Takahiko Masuda, Ph.D COE Postdoctoral Fellow Hokkaido University Japan

2. Culture? Culture: A dominant symbolicmeaning system (e.g. worldview) sustained and transmitted over generations by members of a given society, which then shape the member’s psychological processes.

3. Westerner's Attention East Asians’ Attention Worldview: Things exist by themselves and can be defined by their attributes (context independent, object-oriented). Worldview: Things are inter-related. Various factors are involved in an event (context dependent, context-sensitive). (Nisbett, 2003; Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001)

4. Cultural Variations in Socio-Cognitive Processes

5. Culture and Attention：The Self-Report Task The Michigan Fish Test North Americans basically referred to the attributes of the target fish, whereasthe Japanesereferred to the background and contextual information as well as the target fish attributes. (Masuda & Nisbett, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2001)

6. Culture and Attention： The Recognition Task The Michigan Animal Test (Masuda & Nisbett, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2001)

7. Culture and Attention： The Change Detection Task The Flicker Paradigm (Rensink et al, 1997) (Masuda & Nisbett, under review; Nisbett & Masuda, PNAS, 2003)

8. Culture and Attention: Interpreting emotional expressions (Masuda, Mesquita, Ellsworth, Leu, Tanida & van de Veerdonk ; under review)

9. (Masuda, Mesquita, Ellsworth, Leu, Tanida & van de Veerdonk ; under review)

10. (Masuda, Mesquita, Ellsworth, Leu, Tanida & van de Veerdonk ; under review)

11. (Masuda, Mesquita, Ellsworth, Leu, Tanida & van de Veerdonk ; under review)

12. Culture and Attention: Interpreting emotional expressions The Japanese took into account the background figures’ facial expressions when judging the central figure’s emotion. (e.g. If the background figure looks happy, the degree of happiness of the central figure seems to be intensified).However,North Americans weren’t influenced by changes in the background figures’ facial expressions. Question: To what extent do people allocate their attention to the context information? Question: When, if at all, can we observe cultural variation in the allocation of attention? (Masuda, Mesquita, Ellsworth, Leu, Tanida & van de Veerdonk ; under review)

13. Culture and Attention: Interpreting emotional expressions Westerners’ Attention East Asians’ Attention (Masuda, Mesquita, Ellsworth, Leu, Tanida & van de Veerdonk ; under review)

14. Culture and Attention: Comparing East Asians’ and Westeners’ Esthetics East Asian fine arts in generalemphasize the object as well as its Context. For example, the East Asian perspective includes: *The bird’s eye technique *The scroll technique *The concept of ‘Space’ Western fine arts in general emphasize the objects by themselves. For example, the Western perspective and portraits includes: *Drawing close objects large and far objects small. *Stabilizing the viewer’s stand point. *Utilizing the rule of covertures. *Excluding or darkening backgrounds (Masuda, Gonzalez, Kwan, & Nisbett; under review)

17. DV1: The Location of Horizon in Scenery Pictures Western Perspectives The size of objects Horizon Foreground-------------------------Background Flattening East Asian Perspectives 3D 2D Bird’s eye Horizon

20. DV2: The ratio of face/The entire frame Depth of Field Western Portraits Foreground---------------------------Background East Asian Portraits Foreground---------------------------Background

21. Comparing East Asians’ and Westeners’ Esthetics Study 1: Research on World’s Masterpieces Metropolitan Museum, NY, USA Landscape = 365 Portraits = 210 People = 110 National Museum in Tokyo, Kyoto, Taiwan, and Korea Landscape = 218 Portraits = 151 People = 291 (Masuda, Gonzalez, Kwan, & Nisbett; in preparation)

22. Comparing East Asians’ and Westeners’ Esthetics Study 2: Research on Students’ Drawings Example 1: American, female

23. Comparing East Asians’ and Westeners’ Esthetics Study 2: Research on Students’ Drawings Example 2: East Asian (Hong Kong), female

24. Americans East Asians Comparing East Asians’ and Westeners’ Esthetics Study 3: Research on Students’ Portraits The # of additional objects (%) The Location of the horizon (%) Drawings Drawings (Masuda, Gonzalez, Kwan, & Nisbett; in preparation)

25. Culture and Esthetic Preference: Study 3: Research on Students’ Portraits American Examples

26. Culture and Esthetic Preference: Study 3: Research on Students’ Portraits East Asian Examples

27. Culture and Esthetic Preference: Study 3: Research on Students’ Portraits Americans East Asians The ratio of the face to the frame (%) Laboratory Sitting Model Laboratory Standing Model Atrium Sitting Model Atrium Standing Model (Masuda, Gonzalez, Kwan, & Nisbett; in preparation)

28. Culture and Attention: Comparing East Asians’ and Westeners’ Esthetics Summary Overall, the location of horizon drawn by East Asian artists was significantly higher than those drawn by Western artists. In addition, the ratio of the face against the entire frame inEast Asian paintingswas significantly smaller than those inWestern paintings. The results of the picture-drawing task and picture-taking task replicated the findings of the national masterpiece study.It suggests that even contemporary members ofEast Asianand Western cultures hold their traditional ways of capturing images.

29. Cultural Variations in Attention: Summary

30. Collaborators Culture & Cognition Richard E. Nisbett, University of Michigan Shinobu Kitayama, University of Michigan Culture & Emotion Phoebe Ellsworth, University of Michigan Batja Mesquita, Wake Forest University Culture & Esthetics Richard Gonzalez, University of Michigan Richard E. Nisbett, University of Michigan Special Thanks: The Center of Cultural and Ecological Foundation of the Mind, Hokkaido University, Japan

31. Thank you