Abstract
Self-construal priming can affect an individual’s cognitive processing. Participants who were primed with interdependent self-construal showed more holistic process bias than those who were primed with independent self-construal. The holistic processing of a face also differs across cultures. As such, the purpose of the present study was to explore whether the cultural differences in holistic face processing can be interpreted from the perspective of self-construal, as well as to investigate the relationship between self-construal and holistic face processing/face recognition/race categorization. In Experiment 1, participants were primed with control, interdependent, or independent self-construal, respectively, and then they completed a feature-space same-different task (Experiment 1A) or a composite face effect task (Experiment 1B). Results showed no priming effect in Experiment 1A, whereas independent self-construal priming resulted in less holistic processing in Experiment 1B. In Experiment 2, participants were primed with control, collective/interdependent, relational, or independent self-construal, respectively, and then they completed a Vanderbilt Holistic Face Processing Test and Cambridge Face Memory Test. Participants who were primed as independent showed greater congruency effect than the relational group. Self-construal priming had no effect on face recognition. In Experiment 3, we manipulated self-construal in the same way as that in Experiment 2 and monitored the eye movement of Chinese participants while they learned, recognized, and categorized their own-/other-race faces. Self-construal priming had no effect on face recognition. Compared with other groups, collective-/interdependent-self priming increased the fixation time of eyes and decreased the fixation time of nose in the race categorization task. These results indicated that the cultural differences in self-construal could not mirror the cultural differences in face processing in a simple way.
Highlights
Cultural Difference in Self-ConstrualMarkus and Kitayama (1991) first proposed two kinds of selfconstrual: independent self and interdependent self
Own-Race Bias If the cultural difference of self-construal mirrored the cultural difference of face recognition, an interdependent/collective or relational priming would be expected to increase own-race face recognition, and independent priming would increase other-race face recognition
Our study adopted several face recognition paradigms, several holistic face processing paradigms, and several self-construal priming tasks to investigate the effects of self-construal priming on face recognition, holistic face processing, and race categorization
Summary
Markus and Kitayama (1991) first proposed two kinds of selfconstrual: independent self and interdependent self. The following descriptions of these two kinds of self-construal are summarized from Markus and Kitayama (1991) and Singelis (1994). People with such self-construal tend to separate themselves from the social background. Individuals with high independent self-construal will be more inclined to express their own abilities, traits, characteristics, or goals, rather than the feelings, thoughts, or actions of others. Selfconstrual varies across cultures, being more independent in Western cultures and interdependent in Eastern cultures (Markus and Kitayama, 1991; Markus et al, 1996)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
