Department of Psychology, University of Cologne, Germany.
Conscious Cogn. 2010 Sep;19(3):762-77. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2010.06.006. Epub 2010 Jul 13.
The current study analyzes trans-cultural universalities and specificities in the recognition of status roles, dominance perception and social evaluation based on nonverbal cues. Using a novel methodology, which allowed to mask clues to ethnicity and cultural background of the agents, we compared impression of Germans, Americans and Arabs observing computer-animated interactions from the three countries. Only in the German stimulus sample the status roles (employee vs. supervisor) could be recognized above chance level. However we found significant correlations in dominance perception across all countries. Significant correlations were only found for evaluation between German observers and observers from the other two countries. Perceived dominance uniformly predicted the assignment of status-roles in all cultures. Microanalysis of movement behavior further revealed predictive value of specific nonverbal cues for dominance ratings. Results support the hypothesis of universalities in the processing of dominance cues and point to cultural specificities in evaluative responses to nonverbal behavior.
本研究分析了基于非言语线索的地位角色识别、支配感知和社会评价的跨文化普遍性和特殊性。使用一种新的方法，这种方法可以掩盖参与者种族和文化背景的线索，我们比较了来自三个国家的人观察电脑动画交互时对德国、美国和阿拉伯人的印象。只有在德国刺激样本中，才能在高于随机水平的情况下识别出地位角色（员工与主管）。然而，我们发现，在所有国家中，支配感知都存在显著的相关性。只有在德国观察者和来自其他两个国家的观察者之间的评价中才发现了显著的相关性。在所有文化中，感知到的支配力均匀地预测了地位角色的分配。对运动行为的微观分析进一步揭示了特定非言语线索对支配力评分的预测价值。研究结果支持了支配线索处理具有普遍性的假设，并指出了对非言语行为的评价反应具有文化特异性。
