Lecture 5: Cognition and Perception

Question 1

cognition (2)

Answer 1

• Process of knowing, including: attending, remembering, reasoning
• Content of the processes: concepts + memories

Question 2

perception (1)

Answer 2

• The processes that organize info in the sensory image and interpret it as having been produced by properties of objects or events in the external, 3D world

Question 3

Why might there be cultural differences in cognition and perception? (6)

Answer 3

• Western cultures: influenced by Socratic philosophy and seeking truths
  
  • Individualistic culture: 1) emphasis on the individual; 2) rules promote individual rights
• Eastern cultures: Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism emphasized harmony, interconnectedness, and change
  
  • Collectivist cultures: 1) emphasis on relations over the individual; 2) rules promote unity and selflessness
• How analytic and holistic thinking styles took root in ancient Greece and Confucian China isn’t well understood
• Even non-collectivist cultures that haven’t been exposed to Western education tend to show more holistic thinking

Question 4

analytic thinking (3)

Answer 4

• A focus on objects and their attributes—perceiving objects as separate from their contexts and understanding them in terms of their components
• Usually use more taxonomic categorization
• Individualistic cultures: socialized to be independent, attention focused on objects

Question 5

holistic thinking (3)

Answer 5

• An orientation to the context as a whole—perceiving objects in terms of how they relate to the rest of the context and their behaviour is explained on the basis of these relationships
• Usually use more thematic categorization
• Collectivist cultures: socialized in relational contexts, attention directed at relationships

Question 6

field dependence (1)

Answer 6

• View objects as bound to their backgrounds

Question 7

field independence (1)

Answer 7

• View objects separately from their backgrounds

Question 8

rod-and-frame task (3)

Answer 8

• Say whether a rod in a rotated frame is pointing straight up
• To be good at task → ignore misleading info of the frame and focus solely on rod
• Analytic thinkers should be good at this

Question 9

Masuda, Ellsworth et al. (2008) (7)

(hint: background figures)

Answer 9

• Are there cultural differences in the extent to which social context influences our perception of others?
• Study 1: Japanese and American participants viewed animated scenes on a computer
  
  • Participants viewed 28 of the original stimuli along with 28 new stimuli → can they remember the original stimuli they viewed?
  • Varied stimuli in 4 ways; changed: emotional expression of target face/background figures or clothes of target/background figures
  • Changes in background figures’ facial expressions: Japanese participants much more accurate at identifying
• Study 2: Same as Study 1 but used eye tracking
  
  • Japanese participants spent much less time looking at the target

Question 10

fundamental attribution error (2)

Answer 10

• The tendency to judge the behaviour of others as based on internal, dispositional factors, rather than external, situational factors
• But how fundamental is the fundamental attribution error?

Question 11

Morris & Peng (1994) (8)

(hint: murder cases)

Answer 11

• Compared murders committed by Lu (Chinese-American PhD student who murdered several people after not receiving an award) and McIlvane (European American fired from postal office job and committed shooting in post office)
• Study 1: Compared attributions for these two murders in newspapers → coders rated number of situational and dispositional attributes that were made
  
  • Lu case: American newspapers → internal attributions; Chinese newspapers → external attributions
  • McIlvane case: American + Chinese newspapers both made far more external attributions
• Study 2: Chinese and EA physics graduate students mailed a questionnaire asking for their opinion regarding the 2 murder cases from Study 1
  
  • Presented with 28 explanations for why murders could’ve happened and rated how much they agreed with the explanations
  • Lu case: Americans → internal attributions; Chinese → slightly more external attributes
  • McIlvane case: Americans → internal attributions; Chinese → same number of internal attributions but slightly more external attributions

Question 12

naive dialecticism (3)

Answer 12

• Cognitive reasoning structure based on three principles:
  
  • 1) everything is changing
  • 2) opposing oppositions may both be true
  • 3) everything is connected/interrelated
• Acceptance of contradiction

Question 13

Peng & Nisbett (1999) (7)

(hint: proverbs)

Answer 13

• Compared proverbs from China and USA
• Looked at degree of linearity (e.g. “one against all is certain to fall”) vs. dialecticism (e.g. “beware of your friends not your enemies”)
• Chinese and American participants rated how much they liked these proverbs
• Results: Chinese had 4x as many dialectical proverbs as Americans
  
  • Americans preferred linear to dialectical American proverbs
  • Chinese preferred dialectical to linear Chinese proverbs
  • Chinese also preferred dialectical to linear Yiddish proverbs (so not just because they prefer Chinese proverbs)

Question 14

rule-based reasoning (1)

Answer 14

• Operating according to a set of universal abstract rules and laws

Question 15

associative reasoning (1)

Answer 15

• Considering relationships among objects or events

Question 16

Uskul, Kitayama, & Nisbett (2013) (10)

(hint: fishermen, farmers, herders)

Answer 16

• To what extent are reasoning differences about independence vs. interdependence?
• Predicted herding communities (independent) → analytic thinking; farming and fishing communities (interdependent) → holistic thinking
• Study 1: Participants completed an absolute/relative framed lines test
  
  • All 3 groups made less errors in the relative task: fishermen < farmers < herders
  • Fishermen > farmers > herders for errors in the absolute task
• Study 2: “What doesn’t belong?” task
  
  • Fishermen > farmers > herders in tendency to organize things relationally
  • But all 3 groups tended to think more relationally in general
• Study 3: Participants presented with 10 sets of stimuli and had to determine which group it belonged to either based on a rule (Group 2 - they all have a straight stem) or similarity (Group 1 - the petals and leaves are more similar)
  
  • Herders > fishermen > farmers more likely to use a rule-based (analytic thinking) approach rather than a similarity-based (holistic) approach

Question 17

Ma-Kellams, Blascovich, & McCall (2012) (13)

(hint: bodily states)

Answer 17

• How do cultural differences in cognition and perception influence our awareness of our bodily states?
• Study 1: misattribution of arousal; false decreasing or stable heartbeat info while looking at emotionally evocative photos
  
  • EAs: no significant differences in emotion ratings as a function of whether heart rate feedback was decreasing or stable
  • Asians: rated positive photographs less pleasant when told heart rate decreasing
• Study 2: actually manipulated physiological arousal by using the bridge misattribution paradigm (through immersive environment tech) and a TAT
  
  • EAs: no significant differences in ratings of confederate attractiveness or sexual content in TAT stories
  • Asians: higher ratings of attractiveness and increased sexual content in TAT stories in experimental condition
• Study 3: directly measured visceral perception
  
  • Participants asked to estimate their number of heartbeats while also having their actual heartbeats measured
  • Asians were less accurate than EAs in reporting number of heartbeats, therefore less accurate in perceiving own visceral states
• Study 4: absolute/relative framed lines test
  
  • Asians performed better on relative line drawing task
• Conclusion: Asians pay more attention to context in evaluations of self and others → less attentive to internal states