It's common knowledge that people from different culture act differently, but according to Takahiko Masuda of the University of Alberta, they think differently as well. For example, here's how Westerners and Asians interpret the two pictures above:
“North Americans try to identify the single important thing that is key to making a decision,” explains Dr. Takahiko Masuda, the study’s author, over the phone from his office at the University of Alberta. “In East Asia they really care about the context.”
He studied the eye movement of Americans and Japanese when analyzing a picture of a group of cartoon people. When asked to interpret the emotion of the person in the center, the Japanese looked at the person for about one second before moving on to the people in the background. They needed to know how the group was feeling before understanding the emotion of the individual.
The Americans (and Canadians in subsequent studies) focused 95% of their attention on the person in the center. Only 5% of their attention was focused on the background, and this, Dr. Masuda points out, didn’t influence their interpretation of the central figure’s emotion. For North Americans the foreground is all-important.
Comments (13)
Perhaps people from individualist cultures are predisposed to identify more with the person in the middle and so pay less attention to the group, and people from collectivist cultures are pre-disposed to identify with the group, causing them to spend more time focusing on the people in the background even when asked to focus only on the person in the middle.
Apologies for the run-on sentences :P
I'm Asian. Raised in NY and CA.
I have a particular form of dyslexia (it's an umbrella term) that means my eyes never rest on a single point, this bit of research means that I have Asian eyes, not dyslexia!
I particularly noticed the upset looking 'black' guy in the background.
With my super-duper tinted dyslexia glasses I noticed the foreground.
Interesting, but a fatally flawed bit of research. They probably need to try putting on tinted glasses like I did, before they make any grand conclusions
Looks like you and I were thinking along the same lines. I looked at the folks in the background, too (TN born and raised, mind) and came to similar conclusions.
But it doesn't really define the term, except to say a "new committed relationship", which probably means they are dating exclusively.
followed by
"3) Via Online Dating Site 17%
4) Through Bars/Clubs/Other Social Events 11%"
17 > (11*2)? Am I missing something?