Monolithic Western Mind? Effect of Fear of Isolation on Context Sensitivity in us Americans, Italians and Chinese
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Culture influences what we attend to, encode, remember and think about. Easterners are said to attend more to the relationship between focal objects and their context while Westerners disentangle focal objects from their context. Simply put, Easterners process information holistically and Westerners analytically. Psychosocial factors, like Fear of Isolation, have been proposed as a possible mechanism for cultural differences in terms of information processing. While East vs. West cultural differences are well researched, the monolithic notion that all Westerners process information analytically was questioned in the research presented below. In this paper, we present a study conducted with two Western cultures (Italian and US American) and one Eastern (Chinese) where we induced the chronic psychosocial factor: Fear of Isolation (FOI), and measured its influence on information processing. We found that Italian participants processed information more holistically than US Americans, and that Italians were more similar to Chinese than US Americans.
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... 최근 서로 다른 특성을 가진 집단들 간의 정보 처리 방식의 차이를 비교하는 연구가 활발히 진 행되고 있다 (Masuda, Nisbett, 2001;Kim, Markman, 2006;Kim., Kim, 2010;Federici et al., 2011;Dennis et al., 2014;Hyun et al., 2014;Yoo, Lee, 2015). 이러한 연구의 한 축은 문화 간 비교로 연 구자들은 주로 동양과 서양의 참가자들을 대상으로 주의 (Choi, Nisbett, 2000;Ji et al., 2000), 기억 (Kim, Markman, 2006;Federici et al., 2011), 그리고 범주화 (Chiu, 1972) 등의 다양한 인지 속성에서 의 차이를 검증하여 왔다. ...
... Chua et al. (2005) (Morris, Peng, 1994;Scheufele et al., 2001). Kim, Markman(2006) (Federici et al., 2011;Dennis et al., 2014). 예를 들어, Federici et al.(2011) (Inderbitzen-Nolan, Walters, 2000;Storch et al., 2004;Paik, 2010), 기존 연구결과들 (Kim, Markman, 2006;Federici et al., 2011;Dennis et al., 2014) (Shin, 1998;Lee, 2011). ...
... Kim, Markman(2006) (Federici et al., 2011;Dennis et al., 2014). 예를 들어, Federici et al.(2011) (Inderbitzen-Nolan, Walters, 2000;Storch et al., 2004;Paik, 2010), 기존 연구결과들 (Kim, Markman, 2006;Federici et al., 2011;Dennis et al., 2014) (Shin, 1998;Lee, 2011). 청소년기에 사회불안은 높은 스트레스, 낮은 자기 효능감, 사회기 술 부족 등의 다양한 원인과 이들의 상호작용에 의해 발생한다 (Elkind, 1983;Edelman, 1985;Maddux et al., 1988;Johnson, Glass, 1989;Kendall, Chansky, 1991;Ginsberg et al., 1998;Thompson, Rapee, 2002;Kim, Ahn, 2015). ...
“Sustainability” and “sustainable tourism” are widely debated concepts in tourism worldwide. However, the specific meaning of both concepts across different cultures has not been fully researched, and the terms are frequently assumed to have identical meanings to audiences from different cultures. We aim to close this research gap by studying how tourists from four different countries define and conceptualise “sustainability” and “sustainable tourism.” Specifically, we asked participants from Germany, Italy, Norway, and the United States to define “sustainability” and “sustainable tourism” using open ended questions in a qualitative study. We study the responses using an interdisciplinary framework which is based on research from tourism, intercultural studies, linguistics, and cognitive psychology. The findings show significant cross-cultural differences in respondents’ interpretations of sustainability and sustainable tourism, regarding both the content and the linguistic form of the definitions. Our research challenges the silent assumption that consumers worldwide share a common understanding of sustainability in tourism. We conclude that strategies for promoting sustainability and sustainable tourism must use strong verbal and visual cues tailored to the culture and language of diverse target groups. This includes the use of meaningful culture-specific symbols representing sustainability. Additionally, tourism researchers should be aware that an injudicious transfer of polysemous terms such as “sustainability” and “sustainable tourism” across different contexts and study designs may bias research results.
The study of culture and self casts psychology's understanding of the self, identity, or agency as central to the analysis and interpretation of behavior and demonstrates that cultures and selves define and build upon each other in an ongoing cycle of mutual constitution. In a selective review of theoretical and empirical work, we define self and what the self does, define culture and how it constitutes the self (and vice versa), define independence and interdependence and determine how they shape psychological functioning, and examine the continuing challenges and controversies in the study of culture and self. We propose that a self is the "me" at the center of experience-a continually developing sense of awareness and agency that guides actions and takes shape as the individual, both brain and body, becomes attuned to various environments. Selves incorporate the patterning of their various environments and thus confer particular and culture-specific form and function to the psychological processes they organize (e.g., attention, perception, cognition, emotion, motivation, interpersonal relationship, group). In turn, as selves engage with their sociocultural contexts, they reinforce and sometimes change the ideas, practices, and institutions of these environments.
© The Author(s) 2010.
When looking at a scene, observers feel that they see its entire structure in great detail and can immediately notice any changes in it. However, when brief blank fields are placed between alternating displays of an original and a modified scene, a striking failure of perception is induced: identification of changes becomes extremely difficult, even when changes are large and made repeatedly. Identification is much faster when a verbal cue is provided, showing that poor visibility is not the cause of this difficulty. Identification is also faster for objects mentioned in brief verbal descriptions of the scene. These results support the idea that observers never form a complete, detailed representation of their surroundings. In addition, results also indicate that attention is required to perceive change, and that in the absence of localized motion signals it is guided on the basis of high-level interest.
To see or not to see: The need for attention to perceive changes in scenes. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236170014_To_see_or_not_to_see_The_need_for_attention_to_perceive_changes_in_scenes [accessed Jun 15, 2017].
Two studies support our hypothesis that connected and interdependent self-focus evokes a generally context-dependent cognitive mode (focused on object–context relations) and provide some evidence that separate and independent self-focus evokes a generally
context-independent cognitive mode (focused on objects,independent of contexts). Consistent with our predictions,experimental
manipulation of interdependent self-focus influences cognitive speed/accuracy (Experiment 1) and memory (Experiment 2). When primed self-focus is congruent with the perceptual task at hand,perceptual speed increases (as shown by a significant task by prime interaction effect) and when primed, interdependent self-focus improves memory for incidentally encoded contextual information. Further research to link primed and chronic self-focus effects is called for.
Research on perception and cognition suggests that whereas East Asians view the world holistically, attending to the entire field and relations among objects, Westerners view the world analytically, focusing on the attributes of salient objects. These propositions were examined in the change-blindness paradigm. Research in that paradigm finds American participants to be more sensitive to changes in focal objects than to changes in the periphery or context. We anticipated that this would be less true for East Asians and that they would be more sensitive to context changes than would Americans. We presented participants with still photos and with animated vignettes having changes in focal object information and contextual information. Compared to Americans, East Asians were more sensitive to contextual changes than to focal object changes. These results suggest that there can be cultural variation in what may seem to be basic perceptual processes.
The distinction between relatively independent versus interdependent self-construals has been strongly associated with several important cultural differences in social behavior. The current studies examined the causal role of self-construal by investigating whether priming independent or interdependent self-construals within a culture could result in differences in psychological worldview that mirror those traditionally found between cultures. In Experiment 1, European-American participants primed with interdependence displayed shifts toward more collectivist social values and judgments that were mediated by corresponding shifts in self-construal. In Experiment 2, this effect was extended by priming students from the United States and Hong Kong with primes that were consistent and inconsistent with their predominant cultural worldview. Students who received the inconsistent primes were more strongly affected than those who received the consistent primes, and thus shifted self-construal, and corresponding values, to a greater degree.
Two aspects of translation were investigated: (1) factors that affect translation quality, and (2) how equivalence between source and target versions can be evaluated. The variables of language, content, and difficulty were studied through an analysis of variance design. Ninety-four bilinguals from the University of Guam, representing ten languages, translated or back-translated six essays incorporating three content areas and two levels of difficulty. The five criteria for equivalence were based on comparisons of meaning or predictions of similar responses to original or translated versions. The factors of content, difficulty, language and content-language interaction were significant, and the five equivalence criteria proved workable. Conclusions are that translation quality can be predicted, and that a functionally equivalent translation can be demonstrated when responses to the original and target versions are studied.
East Asians have been found to reason in relatively holistic fashion and Americans in relatively analytic fashion. It has been proposed that these cognitive differences are the result of social practices that encourage interdependence for Asians and independence for Americans. If so, cognitive differences might be found even across regions that are geographically close. We compared performance on a categorization task of relatively interdependent southern Italians and relatively independent northern Italians and found the former to reason in a more holistic fashion than the latter. Furthermore, as it has been argued that working class social practices encourage interdependence and middle class practices encourage independence, we anticipated that working class participants might reason in a more holistic fashion than middle class participants. This is what we found - at least for southern Italy.
This article is based on a much longer paper published in German in Ernst Forsthoff and Reinhard Horstel (Eds.) Standorte im Zeitstrom: Festschrift fur Arnold Gehlen. Zum 70. Geburtstag am 29.1.1974. Frankfurt am Main: Athenaum, 1974. The longer version documents in detail (33 tables) the results of surveys conducted to test the propositions contained in the five hypotheses presented in this article. The propositions are confirmed or refuted, or they are tentatively supported by the data, or they await further testing. Research is being continued. A complete English translation of the paper is available to interested scholars upon request.
Previous research suggests that members of East Asian cultures show a greater preference for dialectical thinking and sensitivity to context information than do Westerners. We suggest this difference is rooted in a greater chronic Fear of Isolation (FOI) in East Asians than in Westerners. To support this hypothesis, we manipulated FOI in a group of Westerners and assessed their relative preference for dialectical proverbs and sensitivity to context. For cross-cultural validation of our hypothesis, we assessed the relationship between chronic levels of FOI and dialectical reasoning in Koreans. Consistent with our proposal, both experimentally primed FOI (Experiment 1A and 2) and chronic levels of FOI (Experiment 1B) were positively related to relative preference for dialectical proverbs. This effect was independent of participants’ level of negative mood (Experiment 2). A third experiment showed that sensitivity to context was affected by FOI in a manner consistent with previous studies of cultural differences (Experiment 3).