Cultural variations in psychological processes are well recognized by cross-cultural psychology. Cultural products-including the visual arts-present one medium through which people may manifest their dominant culture. The present research investigates the appreciation of visual arts cross-culturally by hypothesizing and testing a cultural-match effect (i.e., people tend to appreciate same-culture artworks more than they appreciate different-culture artworks). Additionally, the present work considers the factors of historical period and art medium that have been overlooked in previous research. A mixed 2 3 2 3 2 3 2 design, 97 Western and 91 Eastern naïve viewers from Poland and Hong Kong were presented with 128 visual artworks varying in artwork culture (West vs. East), historical period (traditional vs. contemporary), and art medium (painting vs. mural). In a repeated measures fashion, the participants evaluated each artwork in terms of art identification, liking, understanding, and familiarity, and their art expertise and art interest were also measured. Supporting the hypothesis, the Polish group tended to appreciate Western (i.e., same-culture) artworks more than Eastern (i.e., different-culture) artworks. However, contrary to our prediction, the Hong Kong group also tended to appreciate Western (i.e., different-culture) artworks more than Eastern (i.e., same-culture) artworks, and that might be attributed to the Western influence Hong Kong had received during its British colonial years. Furthermore, cultural-match effect did not readily generalize across historical periods nor across art media. Potential confounding of art expertise and art interest as well as limitations and future directions are discussed.
Empathy is a phenomenon that brings together both emotions and an understanding of another person. Recent studies have disentangled the mechanisms of empathy into emotional and cognitive aspects. Event-related potential (ERP) studies suggest that emotional empathy is related to the modulation of the amplitude of early ERPs, and cognitive empathy is linked to later ERPs. In the current study, we examined the influences of facial attractiveness on empathic response and the effect of cognitive strategies with setting the participants’ attention to attractiveness or pain. Participants (N= 19) viewed photos of physically attractive and unattractive men and women receiving painful stimulation. The amplitude of the N2 component measured at the frontal regions was more negative in painful stimulation compared to the non-painful, but only for attractive faces. There were no differences between painful and non-painful stimulation for unattractive faces. The amplitude of the P3 measured at the central-parietal region component was more positive in the painful condition compared to the non-painful one, but only when participants performed a pain judgment task. There were no differences in the attractiveness judgment task. This study showed that the attractiveness of a model and drawing the participants’ attention to pain constitute an essential modulator of pain empathy.
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