Cross Cultural Differences in Biased Cognition

我们处理周围世界信息的方式对我们的健康和幸福有着重大影响。例如，当一个事件或评论的意义不确定时，有些人比其他人更容易注意到潜在的危险，记住过去不好的事情，并假设最坏的情况。这些倾向被称为消极认知偏见，可能导致情绪低落和生活质量低下。它们还使人们容易患上精神疾病。相比之下，那些有积极认知偏见的人往往表现良好，保持健康。到目前为止，这项工作大部分是在西方白色人群中进行的，我们不知道在东方文化中是否存在类似的认知偏见。这个项目将研究东方人（香港人）和西方人（英国人）的认知偏差，看看两者之间是否有任何差异。它还将研究当一个人迁移到不同的文化时，认知偏见会发生什么。这将告诉我们周围社会和文化的影响是否对我们的认知偏见有任何影响。最后，该项目将考虑我们自己的认知偏见有多少是从父母那里遗传来的。这些结果将告诉我们，认知偏见的已知好的和坏的影响是否也适用于非西方文化群体，以及有多少认知偏见是由我们的基因或环境决定的。

Lay SummaryThe way in which we process information in the world around us has a significant effect on our health and well being. For example, some people are more prone than others to notice potential dangers, to remember bad things from the past and assume the worst, when the meaning of an event or comment is uncertain. These tendencies are called negative cognitive biases and can lead to low mood and poor quality of life. They also make people vulnerable to mental illnesses. In contrast, those with positive cognitive biases tend to function well and remain healthy. To date most of this work has been conducted on white, western populations and we do not know whether similar cognitive biases exist in Eastern cultures. This project will examine cognitive biases in Eastern (Hong Kong nationals ) and Western (UK nationals) people to see whether there are any differences between the two. It will also examine what happens to cognitive biases when someone migrates to a different culture. This will tell us whether influences from the society and culture around us have any effect on our cognitive biases. Finally the project will consider how much our own cognitive biases are inherited from our parents. Together these results will tell us whether the known good and bad effects of cognitive biases apply to non Western cultural groups as well, and how much cognitive biases are decided by our genes or our environment.