Chapter 8. Culture and Vision
Learning Objectives
- Explain how Western and Eastern cultures differ in their visual processing approaches, contrasting analytical vs. holistic perception patterns with specific evidence from attention and memory studies.
- Evaluate how environmental factors (urban vs. rural settings, architectural features) influence susceptibility to visual illusions, using examples of the Müller-Lyer and Ponzo illusions.
- Analyze the relationship between cultural background and contextual processing in facial emotion recognition, citing relevant eye-tracking and behavioral studies.
- Compare cross-cultural differences in visual search patterns and object processing, with particular attention to part-whole relationships and search asymmetries.
Visual perception has traditionally been studied as a universal human experience. But there are several methodological concerns about traditional research studies in the field of Sensation and Perception, including the use of ethnocentric paradigms and overreliance on undergraduate participants from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) populations. Additionally, many studies fail to adequately describe sample characteristics or systematically measure cultural influences. Moreover, research by cultural psychologists, like Shinoba Kitayama and Richard Nisbett and their colleague s increasingly shows that culture significantly influences how we process, attend to, and interpret visual information.
