Effects of cultural priming in bicultural individuals on multiple facial expressions recognition

Abstract

While the use of cultural priming to activate cultural differences has been established, using cultural priming to investigate a social context such as facial expression recognition has been rarely studied. This study investigated the effects of cultural priming of Chinese and Western cultures on multiple facial expressions recognition. Specifically, cultural priming was used to activate the two different modes of thinking found in Chinese and Western cultures i.e. holistic and analytic types respectively. Previous research has shown that the cultural difference in thinking styles influences single facial expression recognition. However, investigating its influence on multiple facial expressions recognition has rarely been studied. Hence, this study aimed to partner these two areas together. Specifically, the effects of thinking styles on the efficiency of recognizing multiple facial expressions were examined in this study. 46 bicultural Western-Chinese undergraduates were first either primed with Chinese or Western culture before completing a multiple facial expressions test. Results showed a trend of participants who were primed with Western culture reacting faster and recognizing multiple facial expressions more accurately, especially positive facial expressions. In contrast, participants primed with Chinese culture reacted slower and recognized multiple facial expressions less accurately. Lastly, limitations and implications were discussed in the paper.