A processing advantage associated with analytic perceptual tendencies: European Americans outperform Asians on multiple object tracking

Certainty in holistic thinking and responses to contradiction: Dialectical proverbs, counter-attitudinal change and ambivalence

The present research examined whether consideration of individuals' certainty in their holism can enhance the ability of this individual difference to predict how they respond to contradiction-relevant outcomes. Across four studies, participants first completed a standardized measure of holistic-analytic thinking. Then, they rated how certain they were in their responses to the holism scale or were experimentally induced to feel high or low certainty. Next, participants were exposed to dialectical proverbs (Study 1a and 1b), to a counter-attitudinal change induction (Study 2), or to a paradigm of attitudinal ambivalence (Study 3). Results revealed that participants with higher certainty in their holistic thinking exhibited higher preference for dialectical proverbs (Study 1a and 1b), changed their attitude less following a counter-attitudinal task (Study 2) and showed weaker correspondence between objective and subjective ambivalence (Study 3). Beyond examining new domains and discovering novel findings, the present work was designed to be the first to show moderation of previously identified effects in the domain of holistic thinking and responses to contradiction.

Historical Sustenance Style and Social Orientations in China: Chinese Mongolians Are More Independent Than Han Chinese

In this study, we examined the Chinese Han and Mongolian, two ethnic groups that belong to the same national and geographic regions but vary in their degrees of social interdependence and independence. We assumed that the Mongolian, who have traditionally been known as a herding community, exhibit a greater independent social orientation compared to the Han Chinese, who have traditionally been known as an agrarian community. Through three different studies we used the explicit measurement of self-construal, implicit cultural task of self - inflation and the practice of name-giving (i.e., baby names as a cultural product) to test our hypothesis. The obtained results revealed that compared to Han Chinese, Mongolian scored higher on independent - self subscale, had greater levels of self-symbolic inflation and were less likely to give common names to their babies. These findings suggest that Mongolians are more independent than Han Chinese. In view of that, the present study contributes to a better understanding of the complexity of Chinese culture in terms of interdependence and independence, and provides further support for historical sustenance theory.

Functional connectivity pattern underlies individual differences in independent self-construal

Independent vs interdependent self-construal is a concept that reflects how people perceive the relationship between self and other people, which has been extensively examined across disciplines. However, little evidence on the whole-brain functional connectivity (FC) pattern of independent vs interdependent self-construal has been reported. Here, in a sample of 51 healthy participants, we used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and voxel-based FC analysis (i.e. FC strength and seed-based FC) by measuring the temporal correlation of blood oxygen level-dependent signals between spatially separate brain regions to investigate the neural mechanism of independent vs interdependent self-construal. First, we found that FC strength of bilateral posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus, and left inferior frontal gyrus were positively correlated with the independent vs interdependent score. Seed-based FC analysis with these three regions as seeds revealed that, FC within default mode network and executive control network was positively correlated with the independent vs interdependent score. Negative correlation with independent vs interdependent score was shown in the connections between default mode network and executive control regions. Taking together, our results provide a comprehensive FC architecture of the independent vs interdependent self-construal and advance the understanding of the interplay between culture, mind and brain.

Culture and cognition

In this paper, we review the latest developments in cultural influences on attention, perception, categorization, memory and cognitive heuristics. We then explore the origin of these cultural differences, and highlight the implications of such culture-specific thinking styles for people's judgment and decision-making processes. We conclude this review by discussing some of the future research directions to further advance our understanding in culture and cognition.