Gobel Matthias S, Chen Alyssa, Richardson Daniel C
SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind, University of California, Santa Barbara.
Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London.
Can J Exp Psychol. 2017 Sep;71(3):258-264. doi: 10.1037/cep0000119. Epub 2017 Jun 12.
Culture can influence how we see and experience the world, and recent research shows that it even determines how we look at each other. Yet, most of these laboratory studies use images of faces that are deprived of any social context. In the real world, we not only look at people's faces to perceive who they are, but also to signal information back to them. It is unknown, therefore, within which interpersonal contexts cultural differences in looking at faces emerge. In the current study, we manipulated one aspect of the interpersonal context of faces: whether the target face either established mutual gaze looking directly into the camera as if talking to the viewer or averted gaze slightly to the side as if talking to another person. East Asian and Western participants viewed target face videos while their eye movements were recorded. If cultural differences are exclusively related to encoding information from others, interpersonal context should not matter. However, if cultural differences are also the result of culturally specific expectations about how to appropriately interact with another person, then cultural differences should be modulated by whether the speaker seemingly addresses the viewer or another person. In support of the second hypothesis, we only find cultural differences in looking at faces in the mutual gaze condition. We speculate that cultural norms surrounding the use of gaze as a social signal may underlie previous findings of cultural differences in face perception. (PsycINFO Database Record
文化会影响我们看待和体验世界的方式，最近的研究表明，它甚至决定了我们如何看待他人。然而，这些实验室研究大多使用的面部图像缺乏任何社会背景。在现实世界中，我们不仅通过观察人们的面部来了解他们是谁，还会向他们传达信息。因此，尚不清楚在哪些人际情境中会出现面部观察的文化差异。在当前的研究中，我们操纵了面部人际情境的一个方面：目标面部是建立相互凝视（直视镜头，就好像在与观看者交谈）还是稍微将目光转向一侧（就好像在与另一个人交谈）。东亚和西方参与者观看目标面部视频的同时，他们的眼球运动被记录下来。如果文化差异仅仅与对他人信息的编码有关，那么人际情境就无关紧要。然而，如果文化差异也是关于如何与他人适当互动的文化特定期望的结果，那么文化差异应该会受到说话者看似是在与观看者还是另一个人交谈的调节。为支持第二个假设，我们仅在相互凝视条件下观察面部时发现了文化差异。我们推测，围绕将目光作为一种社会信号使用的文化规范可能是先前面部感知文化差异研究结果的基础。（PsycINFO数据库记录）
