ワークショップ
2007年度 第6回 文化班ワークショップ
国際ワークショップ "Cultural influences in cognition and emotion"
- 日時
- 2007年12月26日(木) 15:00-18:00
- 場所
-
北海道大学人文・社会科学総合教育研究棟W308
- 参加人数
- 20名
- プログラム
3:00 - 3:10
Introductory remark: Keiko Ishii
3:10 - 4:10 Presentation 1
Oona Cha
"Thinking "I" versus "we": Cognitive consequences of
independence versus interdependent self-construals"
Abstract:
"Thinking "I"
versus "we": Cognitive consequences of independence versus
interdependent self-construals"
Numerous studies have shown pronounced differences in reasoning
and perception between East Asian and Western cultures. One
theoretical account attributes these differences to differences
in self-construal (i.e., interdependent in East Asia and
independent in the West). Unfortunately, the role of
self-construal is difficult to isolate in cross-cultural
comparisons, given the complexity of the independent variable
"culture." The present research fills a gap in this work by
extending the priming approach to East Asian participants. In
four experiments, participants were first primed with
independence or interdependence by circling pronouns related to
"I" or "we" in a paragraph and performed various cognitive
tasks, which required context-independency (Stroop task in
Experiment 1), context-dependency (location memory task in
Experiment 2) or both (Letter identification Task in Experiment
3 and Framed-Line task in Experiment 4). The results showed that
thinking of "I" versus "we" was able to shift Koreans'
attention: Priming independence or "I" generally improved
performance in context-independent tasks but obstructed
performance in context-dependent tasks and vice versa for
priming interdependence or "we". Furthermore, it was found that
this priming effect on attention was qualified by gender. This
research proposes to understand cultural variations in cognition
under the broader theme of independence versus interdependence.
4:10 - 5:10 Presentation 2
Asuka
Komiya
"How do you feel regret?: Cultural dependency and independency
of regret"
Abstract:
Historically, researchers have believed that
people should feel emotions in the same way across cultures
because they have acquired the universal physiological system of
emotions. On the other hand, current studies in cultural
psychology have shown that East Asians and North Americans feel
emotions in different ways (e.g. Uchida et al., 2004), as well
as thinking and attention. However, there have been few
empirical studies dealing with both culturally independent
aspect and dependent aspect of emotions. Through the two
cross-cultural studies, I focused on cognitive processes of
regret known as "a cognitive emotion," and examined its
universality and cultural dependency. In the first study, I
collected daily regret situations from both American and
Japanese students under the following two situations: "Personal"
and "Interpersonal" situation. In the second study, using the
regret situations collected in the first study as stimulus, I
asked participants imagine and rate how they would feel regret
in these situations (situation sampling method). As a result,
both American and Japanese students classified the regret
situations using the same axis, approach-avoidance, while they
evaluated them in different way. Specifically, under personal
situations, Americans feel more regret related to approach goals
than avoidance goals, whereas Japanese feel as regret related to
approach goals as related to avoidance goals. These findings
suggested culturally specific interdependency between society
and regret.
5:10 - 6:10 Presentation 3
Takahiko
Masuda
"Language acquisition and its innateness: Re-considering
cultural universals and specificities of language"
Abstract:
The issue of language acquisition has long been debated in the field of linguistics, psychology, and anthropology. One stream of research emphasizes the biological preparedness for language (e.g. Pinker, 1994). The assertions of this language instinct hypothesis have appealed to researchers who take an evolutionary explanation of human behavior. However, there is an alternative line of research, which emphasizes the language acquisition processes through infant-caregiver interactions (e.g. Tomasello, 1993). The accumulated evidence that supports their assertions has become a foundation of cultural explanation of human behavior. In this talk, I will accentuate differences in their theoretical assumptions, and address a possible direction of research on culture and language.