Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience
2012

Do surrounding figures' emotions affect judgment of tl target figure's emotion? Comparing the eye-movemenl patterns of European Canadians, Asian Canadians, Asian international students, and Japanese (Article) (Open Access)

Masuda T.* , Wang H. , Ishii K. , Ito K.
  • a University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
  • b University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
  • c Kobe University, Kobe, Japan
  • d Institute on Asian Consumer Insight, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Abstract

Although the effect of context on cognition is observable across cultures, preliminary findings suggest that when asked to judge the emotion of a target model's facial expression, East Asians are more likely than their North American counterparts to be influenced by the facial expressions of surrounding others (Masuda et al., 2008b). Cultural psychologists discuss this cultural variation in affective emotional context under the rubric of holistic vs. analytic thought, independent vs. interdependent self-construals, and socially disengaged vs. socially engaged emotion (e.g., Mesquita and Markus, 2004). We demonstrate that this effect is generalizable even when (1) photos of real facial emotions are used, (2) the saliency of the target model's emotion is attenuated, and (3) a specific amount of observation time is allocated. We further demonstrate that the experience plays an important role in producing cultural variations in the affective context effect on cognition. © 2012 Masuda, Wang, Ishii and Ito.

Author Keywords

culture Asian international students The affective context effect Cognition European Canadians Asian Canadians Emotion Japanese

Index Keywords

perception facial expression Japanese human ethnic group controlled study affect eye movement participant observation male eye tracking European Canadian female Asian Canadian Article experience emotion adult human experiment decision making
Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84898574277&doi=10.3389%2ffnint.2012.00072&partnerID=40&md5=815c92c139f3324e34e1df894c177545
DOI: 10.3389/fnint.2012.00072
ISSN: 16625145
Cited by: 29
Original Language: English