Tag: perception

Are You Computer-Literate? Your Proficiency May Have Something to Do with Your Culture

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Does your culture impact your web skills?

How about the way you perceive web advertising?

Last week, we talked about what types of advertising appeal to horizontal and vertical cultures.

This week, we’ll take a closer look at cultural distinctions among web users, including individuals’ media consumption patterns, web proficiency, challenges faced, and their overall stance on web-based advertising.

Cultural Orientations

The conventional understanding of individualism and collectivism, typically framed as opposing concepts on a binary spectrum, warrants a more nuanced and comprehensive approach.

Recent research has shed light on the limitations of the conventional unidimensional viewpoint, leading to the emergence of a more intricate classification known as Vertical and Horizontal Individualism and Collectivism (Triandis, 1995, 2001). 

As we saw with the study last week, this four-fold classification framework offers a valuable instrument for investigating the potential role of cultural orientations in shaping people’s attitudes and behaviors towards media and persuasive communications.

This empirical study employs this four-fold classification to scrutinize cultural predispositions within an individualistic culture, coupled with people’s responses to persuasive communication on the Web.

The Study

In the course of an online survey administered to web users, this study’s findings reveal that these unique cultural orientations wield discernible effects on people’s perceived web skills and their attitudes toward web advertising, both in broad and specific contexts. 

Overall, respondents in the four groups shared similarities in media usage patterns and reported no significant differences in perceived challenges related to the Web. 

However, when it came to perceived Web skills, those with a strong horizontal individualistic orientation appeared to hold a perception of higher skill levels compared to the other groups. 

Web Advertising

What truly stands out is the intriguing revelation that individuals with diverse dominant cultural orientations indeed exhibit varying general attitudes toward Web advertising. 

Notably, the four groups also differed in their perceptions of the informativeness and entertainment value of Web advertising. 

Strikingly, those with a pronounced horizontal individualistic orientation tended to express more negative opinions regarding Web advertising, deeming it less informative and less entertaining than their counterparts.

The idea that individuals with high horizontal individualism may perceive Web advertising as targeting a mass audience rather than catering to their personal uniqueness is intriguing. 

These respondents also reported the highest Web skills among the groups, perhaps driven by their desire to control what they view on the Web and customize persuasive messages to satisfy their quest for individuality.

In sum, these findings underscore the pivotal role of cultural orientations in shaping consumer predispositions towards persuasive communications on the Web. 

In addition to individual attributes like Web skills and knowledge, cultural values and orientations can be regarded as a foundational and steadfast underpinning for shaping beliefs and attitudes. 

These cultural predispositions play a critical role in influencing an individual’s outlook on a wide range of topics, their motivations, objectives, and behaviors.

How Does Culture Influence the Way We Use Our Brains? Find Out Here.

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We’ve all heard of “right-brain” and “left-brain” thinkers.

Left-brain thinkers are thought to be more logical and mathematical, while right-brain thinkers tend to lean emotional and artistic.

But are there any links between the way our brains function and our cultures?

We’ve talked a lot about gene-culture coevolution over these past few weeks.

In short, the theory suggests that genetics and culture are interconnected.

This brain imaging study about visual perceptual tasks seems to substantiate that theory.

Individualist vs. Collective 

Psychological research has shown that individualist and collective values are demonstrated in an individual’s view of objects in relation to their context.

Americans, valuing individuality, tend to view the two as independent from each other.

East Asian cultures, which value the collective, view objects as contextually interdependent.

These differences have been shown to impact perception and memory by behavioral scientists.

The Study: How Our Brains Work

A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology took a look at whether these cultural tendencies can be measured in brain activity patterns.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans from a group of 20 participants – 10 from East Asia, 10 from the U.S. – McGovern Institute for Brain Research Professor John Gabrieli and his team examined participants’ mental operations.

Participants were asked to compare a sequence of images, and their mental operations were mapped via blood flow changes in the brain.

The images were lines within squares.

Participants were asked to compare each image with the previous image, making judgments based on relative judgments of interdependent objects or absolute judgments of individual objects without context.

For instance, some questions asked whether the lines were proportional to the squares, regardless of size (interdependent); others asked whether the lines were the same length as each other, regardless of the squares (independent of context).

The Results: Confirmed

While the simplicity of the task resulted in no differences in accuracy between the groups, brain activation patterns did differ.

Relative judgments, which have been shown to be harder for Americans, stimulated the brain regions dedicated to mental tasks that demand attention. 

These regions were less active for absolute judgments.

As you might guess, the results for the East Asian group were the opposite, with brain activity becoming more active for absolute judgments and less for relative.

The paper’s lead author, Trey Hedden, said of the study:

“We were surprised at the magnitude of the difference between the two cultural groups, and also at how widespread the engagement of the brain’s attention system became when making judgments outside the cultural comfort zone.”

Even more interesting, questionnaires had been distributed prior to the exam to see how closely each individual identified with their culture, using questions regarding values and norms.

Those individuals who identified more intimately with their culture’s values showed a stronger reactive pattern of brain activity relative to their culture.

This study suggests that our culture – and how closely we individually identify with our culture – can influence the way our minds work.

Pretty heady.

Are Facial Expressions Perceived Differently Across Cultures? Find Out Here.

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Languages have shaped our genetics in terms of physiological differences in speech.

The roof of the mouth, for instance, differs across cultures.

But language isn’t the only part of communication.

Facial expressions and mannerisms are a big part of communication, and the interpretation of these types of expression differs across cultures.

The facial musculature of humans is highly developed, far more so than in any other primate species.

As such, the lips and eyes reveal a lot about human emotion.

According to Herbert Gintis’ “Gene-culture coevolution and the nature of human sociality”:

“Humans have evolved a highly specialized and very costly complex of physiological characteristics that both presuppose and facilitate sophisticated aural and visual communication, whereas communication in other primates, lacking as they are in cumulative culture, goes little beyond simple calling and gesturing capacities.”

While other primate species’ may go “little beyond,” how far does ours go?

Emotional Expression

Prior studies have suggested that the evolutionary nature of facial expressions does not differ across cultures, but at least one study has found that expressions of happiness, anger, and sadness are perceived differently between the East and the West.

According to the study’s abstract:

“Briefly stated, the universality hypothesis claims that all humans communicate six basic internal emotional states (happy, surprise, fear, disgust, anger, and sad) using the same facial movements by virtue of their biological and evolutionary origins [Susskind JM, et al. (2008) Nat Neurosci 11:843–850].”

Published by the American Psychological Association in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, the research, led by Rachael E. Jack, PhD, of the University of Glasgow, opposes this theory.

The Study

Looking at the way in which Western Caucasians and East Asians view various expressions according to their facial features, two groups – one of Caucasians and one of Chinese participants – were selected.

The study’s participants viewed emotion-neutral faces that were altered at random using technology. They were asked to classify the faces as happy, sad, angry, disgusted, fearful, or surprised.

Researchers were then able to identify the facial features that the groups of participants associated with the emotions.

From the responses, researchers deduced that Western Caucasians focused more on the mouth and eyebrows when identifying facial expressions, while Chinese participants focused primarily on the eyes.

These differences can lead to complexities in communication across cultures, resulting in misinterpretation or missed signals of emotional expression. 

The findings support the concept of gene-culture coevolution and how culture is increasingly driving human behavior more than genetics.

We’ll talk more about cultural mannerisms and body language next week.