TY - JOUR
T1 - Influences of culture and visual context on real-time social categorization
AU - Freeman, Jonathan B.
AU - Ma, Yina
AU - Han, Shihui
AU - Ambady, Nalini
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported in part by National Institutes of Health grant F31-MH092000 to J.B.F., National Science Foundation EAPSI grant OISE-1107874 to J.B.F. and research grant BCS-0435547 to N.A., and National Natural Science Foundation of China grants 30910103901 , and 91024032 to S.H.
PY - 2013/3
Y1 - 2013/3
N2 - Social categorization is often thought to be based on facial features and immune to visual context. Moreover, East Asians have been argued to attend to context more than Westerners. American and Chinese participants were presented with faces varying along a White-Asian morph continuum either in American, neutral, or Chinese contexts. American contexts made White categorizations more likely, and Chinese contexts made Asian categorizations more likely. Further, the compatibility between facial and contextual cues influenced the directness of participants' hand trajectories en route to selecting a category response. Even when an ultimate response was not biased by context, the trajectory was nevertheless partially attracted to the category response associated with the context. Importantly, such partial attraction effects in hand trajectories revealed that the influence of context began earlier in time for Chinese relative to American participants. Together, the results show that context systematically influences social categorization, sometimes altering categorization responses and other times only temporarily altering the process. Further, the timing of contextual influences differs by culture. The findings highlight the role of contextual and cultural factors in social categorization.
AB - Social categorization is often thought to be based on facial features and immune to visual context. Moreover, East Asians have been argued to attend to context more than Westerners. American and Chinese participants were presented with faces varying along a White-Asian morph continuum either in American, neutral, or Chinese contexts. American contexts made White categorizations more likely, and Chinese contexts made Asian categorizations more likely. Further, the compatibility between facial and contextual cues influenced the directness of participants' hand trajectories en route to selecting a category response. Even when an ultimate response was not biased by context, the trajectory was nevertheless partially attracted to the category response associated with the context. Importantly, such partial attraction effects in hand trajectories revealed that the influence of context began earlier in time for Chinese relative to American participants. Together, the results show that context systematically influences social categorization, sometimes altering categorization responses and other times only temporarily altering the process. Further, the timing of contextual influences differs by culture. The findings highlight the role of contextual and cultural factors in social categorization.
KW - Culture
KW - Face perception
KW - Mouse-tracking
KW - Social categorization
KW - Time-course
KW - Visual context
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jesp.2012.10.015
DO - 10.1016/j.jesp.2012.10.015
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84870856208
SN - 0022-1031
VL - 49
SP - 206
EP - 210
JO - Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
JF - Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
IS - 2
ER -