Culture and Attention Psy2004

How does culture affect the perception of eye contact?

Eye contact has different social meanings across cultures

Eye contact in Western cultures

Direct eye contact is considered positive, confident, and expected in conversation.

Eye contact in Asian cultures

Direct eye contact—especially with elders or superiors—can be seen as disrespectful or confrontational.

Blais et al. (2008) Task

Participants judged whether faces were making direct eye contact.

Blais et al. (2008) Participants

Finnish (European) vs. Japanese

Blais et al. (2008) Findings

Finnish participants more accurate at perceiving direct gaze in own race faces (own race effect)

Japanesse participants showed no own-race effect + less visual experience with gaze due to cultural norms (discouraged)

Blais et al. (2008) conclusion

Cultural upbringing and visual experience affect gaze is interpreted

Even automatic social processes like gaze perception are influenced by top-down cultural factors.

Analytic vs Holistic Thinking Styles

Western Culture - Analytic

East Asian Culture - Holistic

Analytic

Focus on focal objects

Context-independent

Holistic

Focus on context and relationships

Context dependent

EU vs ASIA - Scene description

Americans described individual fish and their features.

Japanese described fish in relation to background and other objects.

→ Japanese participants paid more attention to contextual information.

Western Participants Eye movement

Western participants fixated longer on central objects.

East Asian eye movement

East Asian participants spent more time looking at backgrounds.

What does eye movement evidence suggest

→ Suggests culture shapes attentional focus during visual perception.

Frame and Line Test

Participants drew a line within a new frame, either:

Absolute task: copy same length (context-independent)

Relative task: match proportion (context-dependent)

Frame and Line Test Results

Japanese performed better on relative (contextual) tasks.

Americans performed better on absolute (focal-object) tasks.

→ Reflects culturally shaped attentional strategies.

Change Blindness

Japanese and American participants shown city scenes.

Japanese environments: more visually complex, with more ambiguous object boundaries.

Change Blindness Results

Japanese participants more sensitive to contextual changes.

Participants exposed to Japanese scenes (regardless of culture) were better at noticing changes.

→ Environments afford culturally specific attention patterns.

Developmental evidence

Children (ages 4-7) in Japan and the US completed context-dependent tasks.

No difference at age 4-5.

By age 6-7, Japanese children showed more context sensitivity.

→ Cultural differences in attention emerge with age and socialisation.

Short SOA - gaze cueing

Short SOA (cue quickly followed by target): both Japanese and American participants showed gaze cueing effect.

Long SOA - gaze cueing

Americans continued to follow gaze.

Japanese participants disengaged when they recognised the cue was non-predictive.

→ Japanese participants used contextual information more flexibly.