Attending holistically versus analytically: Comparing the context sensitivity of Japanese and Americans.
Abstract
Much research indicates that East Asians, more than Americans, explain events with reference to the context. The authors examined whether East Asians also attend to the context more than Americans do. In Study 1, Japanese and Americans watched animated vignettes of underwater scenes and reported the contents. In a subsequent recognition test, they were shown previously seen objects as well as new objects, either in their original setting or in novel settings, and then were asked to judge whether they had seen the objects. Study 2 replicated the recognition task using photographs of wildlife. The results showed that the Japanese (a) made more statements about contextual information and relationships than Americans did and (b) recognized previously seen objects more accurately when they saw them in their original settings rather than in the novel settings, whereas this manipulation had relatively little effect on Americans.
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Recent studies by Masuda and Nisbett, Kitayama and colleagues, Chua and colleagues, and others provided converging evidence that nonsocial attention mechanisms are influenced by culture, with attention more focused for North Americans and more diffused or holistic for Asians and Asian Americans.
“Recent studies by Masuda and Nisbett (2001), Kitayama and colleagues (2003), Chua and colleagues (2005a), and many others have provided converging evidence for this anticipation with a variety of behavioral measures including response time, task performance, and eye-tracking.”
From Cultural neuroscience of the self: understanding the social grounding of the brain (2010) · cites this paper as Masuda and Nisbett (2001)
Japanese participants processed visual scenes more holistically than American participants, who employed item-specific processing.
“Japanese participants processed visual scenes more holistically, focusing on the relations among the different elements, compared with American participants, who employed item-specific processing (Masuda & Nisbett, 2001).”
From Stories in Action. (2022) · cites this paper as Masuda & Nisbett, 2001
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- Authors
- Masuda, T., & Nisbett, R. E.
- Affiliations
- University of Michigan (US)
- Venue
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
- Published
- 2001
- Volume
- 81
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 922-934
- ISSN
- 0022-3514 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-1315
- OpenAlex
- W4249426557
- Cited by
- 1,424
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 36 · 2025: 68 · 2024: 60 · 2023: 54 · 2022: 95 · 2021: 85 · 2020: 155 · 2019: 71 · 2018: 79 · 2017: 75 · 2016: 68 · 2015: 78 · 2014: 79 · 2013: 69 · 2012: 71
- FWCI
- 12.04
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Cultural Differences and Values
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Categorization, perception, and language
- Keywords
- context sensitivity, cross-cultural comparison, cognitive style, cultural differences in cognition
- MeSH terms
- Attention, Cognition, Cross-Cultural Comparison, Culture, Humans, Japan, Mental Recall, Social Perception, Socialization, Thinking, United States, Visual Perception
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