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认知是不同的。美国人经常将注意力集中在视野中的特定物体上，并将其视为独立于环境中的其他物体。中国人经常把注意力集中在视野中的所有物体上，并认为它们与环境相互依存。为什么会发生这种情况？EAPSI研究员将与中国北京大学的跨文化心理学和社会神经科学专家Shihui Han博士合作，研究这些差异产生的原因。最终，本研究将有助于更好地理解认知和感知的文化差异的原因，从而有助于加强不同文化国家之间的相互理解。本项目涉及的假设是，美国人和中国人在分析和整体认知方面的差异是由各自社会的社会规范造成的。中国社会比美国社会更严格，对规范偏差的社会和制度惩罚更大，这应该会导致中国人在不同背景下感到更多的约束。因此，它将是自适应的中国人关注的焦点和周边事件，线索，和对象，以及它们与其他环境特征的关系意味着什么。 知觉限制将被操纵与图形启动任务，以检查的效果，分析和整体认知的四个措施。这些实验的结果有望有助于解决跨文化心理学中一个重要的理论争论，即文化行为的基本动机基础。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.