Culture and attention: Recent empirical findings and new directions in cultural psychology

Abstract

Over the past 3 decades, cultural psychologists have empirically investigated the influence of cultural meaning systems on human psychology. Under the rubric of holistic versus analytic thought, researchers have demonstrated that there are substantial cultural variations in social cognition, and that such variations are observable even in so-called fundamental psychological processes, such as attention. The aim of this paper is to review 3 major themes in culture and attention: (1) culture and attention to nonsocial scenes, (2) culture and attention to social scenes, and (3) culture and aesthetics. The paper also discusses 4 major strands of research that could be considered important candidates to further advance the understanding of culture and attention: (1) research on "culture ➔ human psychological processes," where we investigate how culture influences modes of attention; (2) research on "human psychology ➔ cultural processes," where we investigate how those who hold a specific mode of attention create cultural products and tangible representations of culturally shared meanings; (3) research on cultural neuroscience, where we investigate underlying mechanisms and processes of specific modes of attention; and (4) research on cultural transmission processes, where we investigate how specific modes of attention is taught by adults and internalized by children.

Social context and culture influence judgments of non-Duchenne smiles

“…Although context-dependent judgments were made in both countries, the influence of verbal vignettes describing polite situations was stronger in Japan than the UK, with the effect of vignettes describing happy contexts being comparable in the two countries. This result is generally consistent with the notion of analytic versus holistic thinking styles (Masuda 2017). While the former (dominant in the Western world) is selectively focused on central objects or targets rather than the surroundings, holistic thinking (dominant among East Asians) emphasises a context-oriented focus of perception (Ma-Kellams 2014).…”

“…The presence of brief descriptions of situations associated with happiness or the need to be polite made the smiles appear more or less genuine compared to smiles presented without any contextual information. Whereas existing research suggests that observers from Eastern cultures may generally rely on the situational context more than Western observers (Masuda 2017;Matsumoto et al 2010), we obtained a similar pattern of findings among British and Japanese participants. The main difference between the two samples, accounting for a significant interaction effect, was due to a stronger influence of the polite vignettes in the Japanese sample than the British sample.…”

Does cultural background predict the spatial distribution of attention?

“…Furthermore, a broad array of visual attention processes have been shown to vary with culture, such as patterns of eye movements, the way in which individuals describe and remember scenes, as well as rates of change detection and change blindness (e.g. Boland, Chua, & Nisbett, 2008;Chua et al, 2005;Boduroglu & Shah, 2017;Goh et al, 2007;Ketay et al, 2009;Masuda, 2017;Masuda et al, 2019;Nisbett, 2003;Nisbett & Masuda, 2003;Nisbett & Miyamoto, 2005;Senzaki, Masuda, & Nand, 2014).…”

“…Over the past two decades, an accumulating body of research has demonstrated that there are cultural differences in cognitive processes (e.g. Boduroglu & Shah, 2017;Goh et al, 2007;Ketay, Aron, & Hedden, 2009;Masuda, 2017;Masuda, Li, Russell, Lee, 2019;Nisbett & Masuda, 2003;Nisbett & Miyamoto, 2005). For example, Kitayama (1991, 2010) proposed that cultural variation in self-concept might CULTURE AND ATTENTION DISTRIBUTION 5 influence cognition.…”

Cross-Cultural Differences in Cognitive Style, Individualism/Collectivism and Map Reading between Central European and East Asian University Students

“…The theory of analytic and holistic (A/H) cognition postulates the existence of distinct cognitive and perceptual styles -relatively stable ways of cognitive processing (for review, see Masuda, 2017;Nisbett & Masuda, 2003;Nisbett & Miyamoto, 2005;Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001). The majority of research in this field focuses on comparing the charac-teristics of cognitive processes in two world regions: the "West" (e.g., North America, Western Europe) and the "East" (mainly the countries of East and Southeast Asia such as China, Japan, South Korea, etc.…”