EAPSI: Exploring How Perceptions of Autonomy Influence Cross-Cultural Differences in Cognition

美国人和中国人对世界的看法和看法不同。美国人经常将注意力集中在他们视野中的特定物体上，并将它们视为独立于环境中的其他物体。中国人经常将注意力集中在他们视野中的所有物体上，并将它们视为与环境相互依存。这一切为什么要发生？这位EAPSI研究员将与北京大学韩世辉博士、跨文化心理学和社会神经科学专家中国合作，研究这些差异产生的原因。最终，这项研究将有助于更好地理解认知和感知方面的文化差异的原因，从而潜在地有助于增进具有不同文化背景的民族之间的相互理解。本项目涉及一种假设，即美国人和中国人在分析性和整体性认知方面的差异是各自社会规范的结果。中国社会比美国社会更严密，对违反规范的行为表现出更大的社会和制度惩罚，这应该会导致中国人在不同背景下感受到更多的约束。因此，对于中国人来说，注意焦点和外围事件、线索和物体以及它们与其他环境特征的意义是相适应的。使用图画启动任务来操纵感知到的限制，以检验其对分析性和整体性认知的四个测量指标的影响。这些实验的发现有望有助于解决跨文化心理学中关于文化行为的基本动机基础的一个重要的理论辩论。该NSF EAPSI奖是与中国科技部合作资助的。

Americans and Chinese think about and perceive the world differently. Americans often focus their attention on specific objects in their field of vision and view them as independent from other objects in their environment. Chinese often focus their attention on all objects in their field of vision and view them as interdependent with their environment. Why does this happen? In collaboration with Dr. Shihui Han of Peking University in Beijing, China, an expert in cross-cultural psychology and social neuroscience, the EAPSI fellow will investigate why these differences arise. Ultimately, this research will lead to greater understanding about the causes of cultural differences in cognition and perception thereby potentially contributing to enhancement of mutual understanding between nations of distinctive cultures.This project deals with the hypothesis that the differences in analytic and holistic cognition between Americans and Chinese result from the social norms of their respective societies. Chinese society is tighter than American society and exhibits greater social and institutional punishment for norm deviance, which should result in Chinese feeling more constraint across contexts. Consequently, it would be adaptive for Chinese to pay attention to both focal and peripheral events, cues, and objects and what they mean in relation to other environmental features. The perceived constraint will be manipulated with a pictorial priming task to examine the effect on four measures of analytic and holistic cognition. Findings from these experiments are expected to contribute to the resolution of an important theoretical debate in cross-cultural psychology that concerns the basic motivational underpinnings of cultural behavior. This NSF EAPSI award is funded in collaboration with the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.