East Asian Canadians Research Articles

Do Surrounding People's Emotions Affect Judgment of the Central Person's Emotion? Comparing Within Cultural Variation in Holistic Patterns of Emotion Perception in the Multicultural Canadian Society.

Previous studies in cultural psychology have suggested that when assessing a target person's emotion, East Asians are more likely to incorporate the background figure's emotion into the judgment of the target's emotion compared to North Americans. The objective of this study was to further examine cultural variation in emotion perception within a culturally diverse population that is representative of Canada's multicultural society. We aimed to see whether East-Asian Canadians tended to keep holistic tendencies of their heritage culture regarding emotion perception. Participants were presented with 60 cartoon images consisting of a central figure and four surrounding figures and were then asked to rate the central figure's emotion; out of the four cartoon figures, two were female and two were male. Each character was prepared with 5 different emotional settings with corresponding facial expressions including: extremely sad, moderately sad, neutral, moderately happy, and extremely happy. Each central figure was surrounded by a group of 4 background figures. As a group, the background figures either displayed a sad, happy, or neutral expression. The participant's task was to judge the intensity of the central figures' happiness or sadness on a 10-point Likert scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 9 (extremely). For analysis, we divided the participants into three groups: European Canadians (N = 105), East Asian Canadians' (N = 104) and Non-East Asian/Non-European Canadians (N = 161). The breakdown for the Non-East Asian/Non-European Canadian group is as follows: 94 South Asian Canadians, 25 Middle Eastern Canadians, 23 African Canadians, 9 Indigenous Canadians, and 10 Latin/Central/South American Canadians. Results comparing European Canadians and East Asian Canadians demonstrated cultural variation in emotion judgment, indicating that East Asian Canadians were in general more likely than their European Canadian counterparts to be affected by the background figures' emotion. The study highlights important cultural variations in holistic and analytic patterns of emotional attention in the ethnically diverse Canadian society. We discussed future studies which broaden the scope of research to incorporate a variety of diverse cultural backgrounds outside of the Western educational context to fully comprehend cultural variations in context related attentional patterns.

Culture and Stress Coping: Cultural Variations in the Endorsement of Primary and Secondary Control Coping for Daily Stress Across European Canadians, East Asian Canadians, and the Japanese

AbstractPeople's daily stress experiences differ across cultures. The current study examined how people cope with daily stress by applying primary and secondary control coping and how people change their strategies across situations (actual vs. ideal situations). European Canadians (n = 100), East Asian Canadians (n = 98), and the Japanese (n = 103) read 40 stress scenarios and judged their endorsement of stress coping strategies based on their actual primary and secondary control coping usage in the past, as well as their ideal preference of each coping strategy for each stress scenario. We examined whether primary versus secondary control coping usage differs across cultural groups. The results indicated the following. (a) European Canadians showed an overall usage for primary control coping over secondary control; however, there was no selection of primary control coping over secondary control coping for East Asian Canadians or the Japanese. (b) All cultural groups preferentially endorsed primary control coping over secondary control coping for their ideal preference of coping strategy. Nevertheless, the Japanese still showed more preference for endorsing secondary control coping as an ideal coping strategy compared to European Canadians. (c) There were mediational relationships between culture, independence, and the primary–secondary difference in control coping. (d) East Asian Canadians demonstrated a unique coping pattern, and we inferred that it reflected their multicultural identity. We discussed both academic and societal implications and assert that the present findings demonstrate significant relationships between people's culture and well‐being.

Does self-construal shape automatic social attention?

We examined whether activating independent or interdependent self-construal modulates attention shifting in response to group gaze cues. European Canadians (Study 1) and East Asian Canadians (Study 2) primed with independence vs. interdependence completed a multi-gaze cueing task with a central face gazing left or right, flanked by multiple background faces that either matched or mismatched the direction of the foreground gaze. Results showed that European Canadians (Study 1) mostly ignored background gaze cues and were uninfluenced by the self-construal primes. However, East Asian Canadians (Study 2), who have cultural backgrounds relevant to both independence and interdependence, showed different attention patterns by prime: those primed with interdependence were more distracted by mismatched (vs. matched) background gaze cues, whereas there was no change for those primed with independence. These findings suggest activating an interdependent self-construal modulates social attention mechanisms to attend broadly, but only for those who may find these representations meaningful.

Acute Discrimination and East Asian-White Mental Health Gap during COVID-19 in Canada

Since the COVID-19 outbreak started in China, Chinese and Chinese looking East Asian Canadians have experienced more racist attacks, violence, and discrimination. In this article, we consider whether East Asian Canadians face a disproportionate mental health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and, if so, whether the increased levels of discrimination explain this differential impact. Analyzing data from a nationally representative survey we conducted in March and April, 2020, we indeed find that higher incidences of acute discrimination encountered by East Asian Canadians during the COVID-19 pandemic explain their higher levels of mental health symptoms as compared to white Canadians. We call for a need to include mental health interventions and support designed specifically to address the needs of the East Asian Canadians in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

How robust is the own-group face recognition bias? Evidence from first- and second-generation East Asian Canadians.

There is mounting evidence that North Americans are better able to remember faces of targets who belong to the same social group, and this is true even when the social groups are experimentally created. Yet, how Western cultural contexts afford the development of this own group face recognition bias remains unknown. This question is particularly important given that recent findings suggest that first-generation East Asian Canadians do not show this bias. In the current research, we examined the own-group bias among first- and second-generation East Asian Canadians, who vary systematically in their exposure to and engagement in a Western cultural context, and tested mediators that could explain any difference. In Study 1, second-generation East Asian Canadians showed better memory for same-group (vs. other-group) faces. In Studies 2 and 3, as well as a meta-analysis of all three studies, we found some additional evidence that second-generation East Asian Canadians show better memory for same-group (vs. other-group) faces, whereas first-generation East Asian Canadians do not, but only when each cultural group was examined separately in each study, as no interaction with generational status emerged. In Study 2, and in a higher powered pre-registered Study 3, we also examined whether second- (vs. first-) generational status had a positive indirect effect on same-group face recognition through the effects of acculturation and perceived relational mobility in the immediate social environment, however this mediation model was not supported by the data. Overall, the results provide some additional evidence that the effect of mere social categorization on face recognition may not be as consistently found among East Asian participants.

Ethnic background is associated with no live kidney donor identified at the time of first transplant assessment-an opportunity missed? A single-center retrospective cohort study.

Patients from ethnocultural minorities have reduced access to live donor kidney transplant (LDKT). To explore early pretransplant ethnocultural disparities in LDKT readiness, and the impact of the interactions with the transplant program, we assessed if patients had a potential live donor (LD) identified at first pretransplant assessment, and if patients with no LD initially received LDKT subsequently. Single-center, retrospective cohort of adults referred for kidney transplant (KT) assessment. Multivariable logistic regression assessed the association between ethnicity and having a potential LD. Cox proportional hazard analysis assessed the association between no potential LD initially and subsequent LDKT. Of 1617 participants, 66% of Caucasians indicated having a potential LD, compared with 55% of South Asians, 44% of African Canadians, and 41% of East Asians (P<0.001). In multivariable logistic regression analysis, the odds of having a potential LD identified was significantly lower for African, East and South Asian Canadians. No potential LD at initial KT assessment was associated with lower likelihood of LDKT subsequently (hazard ratio [HR], 0.14; [0.10-0.19]). Compared to Caucasians, African, East and South Asian and African Canadians are less likely to have a potential LD identified at first KT assessment, which predicts a lower likelihood of subsequent LDKT.

Cultural differences in psychological reactance: Responding to social media censorship

In this research, we examined cultural differences in psychological reactance in response to a threat of social media censorship among two collectivistic cultural groups (East Asian Canadians, Iranian Canadians) and one individualistic cultural group (European Canadians). Results indicated that, compared with European Canadians and East Asian Canadians, Iranian Canadians exhibited psychological reactance to a greater degree when the threat came from the government. This cultural difference was mediated by direct and indirect experience with censorship but not independent vs. interdependent self-construal. When the threat came from a student, however, there were no cultural differences in psychological reactance. These results are consistent with the notion that Iranians have more salient experiences with restriction of information access, and thus have a heightened sensitivity to the freedom threat of social media censorship when it came from a powerful source. This research highlights the importance of going beyond self-construal when analyzing cultural variations in psychological reactance.

Overconfidence Is Universal? Elicitation of Genuine Overconfidence (EGO) Method Reveals Systematic Differences Across Domain, Task Knowledge, and Incentives in Four Populations

Overconfidence is often assumed to be a human universal, but there remains a dearth of data systematically measuring overconfidence across populations and contexts. Moreover, cross-cultural experiments often fail to distinguish between placement and precision and worse still, often compare population-mean placement estimates rather than individual performance subtracted from placement. Here we introduce a new method for concurrently capturing both placement and precision at an individual level based on individual performance: The Elicitation of Genuine Overconfidence (EGO) method. We conducted experiments using the EGO method, manipulating domain, task knowledge, and incentives across four populations—Japanese, Hong Kong Chinese, Euro Canadians, and East Asian Canadians. We find that previous measures of population-level overconfidence may have been misleading; rather than universal, overconfidence is highly context dependent. Our results reveal cross-cultural differences in sensitivity to incentives and differences in overconfidence strategies, with underconfidence, accuracy, and overconfidence. Comparing sexes, we find inconsistent results for overplacement, but that males are consistently more confident in their placement. These findings have implications for our understanding of the adaptive value of overconfidence and its role in explaining population-level and individual-level differences in economic and psychological behavior.

The added value of world views over self-views: Predicting modest behaviour in Eastern and Western cultures.

Personality research has been focused on different aspects of the self, including traits, attitudes, beliefs, goals, and motivation. These aspects of the self are used to explain and predict social behaviour. The present research assessed generalized beliefs about the world, termed 'social axioms' (Leung etal., ), and examined their additive power over beliefs about the self in explaining a communal behaviour, that is, modesty. Three studies predicted reported modest behaviour among Mainland Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese, East Asian Canadians, and European Canadians. In addition to self-reports in Studies 1 and 2, informant reports from participants' parents and close friends were collected in Study 3 to construct a behavioural composite after examining the resulting multitrait-multimethod matrix and intraclass correlations. World views (operationalized as social axioms) explained additional variance in modest behaviour over and above self-views (operationalized as self-efficacy, self-construals, and trait modesty) in both Eastern and Western cultures. Variation in reports on three factors of modest behaviour was found across self-, parent, and friend perspectives, with significant differences across perspectives in self-effacement and other-enhancement, but not in avoidance of attention-seeking.

Ethnic Background Is a Potential Barrier to Living Donor Kidney Transplantation in Canada: A Single-Center Retrospective Cohort Study.

We examined if African or Asian ethnicity was associated with lower access to kidney transplantation (KT) in a Canadian setting. Patients referred for KT to the Toronto General Hospital from January 1, 2003, to December 31, 2012, who completed social work assessment, were included (n = 1769). The association between ethnicity and the time from referral to completion of KT evaluation or receipt of a KT were examined using Cox proportional hazards models. About 54% of the sample was white, 13% African, 11% East Asian, and 11% South Asian; 7% had "other" (n = 121) ethnic background. African Canadians (hazard ratio [HR], 0.75; 95% CI: 0.62-0.92]) and patients with "other" ethnicity (HR, 0.71; 95% CI, 0.55-0.92) were less likely to complete the KT evaluation compared with white Canadians, and this association remained statistically significant in multivariable adjusted models. Access to KT was significantly reduced for all ethnic groups assessed compared with white Canadians, and this was primarily driven by differences in access to living donor KT. The adjusted HRs for living donor KT were 0.35 (95% CI, 0.24-0.51), 0.27 (95% CI, 0.17-0.41), 0.43 (95% CI, 0.30-0.61), and 0.34 (95% CI, 0.20-0.56) for African, East or South Asian Canadians and for patients with "other" ethnic background, respectively. Similar to other jurisdictions, nonwhite patients face barriers to accessing KT in Canada. This inequity is very substantial for living donor KT. Further research is needed to identify if these inequities are due to potentially modifiable barriers.

Culture, group membership, and face recognition. Commentary: Will you remember me? Cultural differences in own-group face recognition biases

Literature reports that same-race faces are better recognized than cross-race faces. This cross-race effect has been observed, inter alia, in European Americans (MacLin et al., 2004) as well as in Asian Americans and East Asians (Michel et al., 2006; Hayward et al., 2008). Although research showed that cross-race effects reflect a superiority in the processing of components and configurations of own-race faces (Hayward et al., 2008), empirical evidence showed that (arbitrary) social categorization similarly contributes to an ingroup bias in face recognition (MacLin and Malpass, 2001). This finding suggests that mere social categorization is sufficient to bias face recognition performance in favor of ingroup faces, reflecting a motivational preference to individuate ingroup members (Hugenberg et al., 2010). Following these findings, Ng et al. (2016) examined whether participants' cultural background moderates the effect of arbitrarily determined social group membership on the recognition performance for ingroup/outgroup targets displaying neutral facial expressions. According to their focal hypothesis, North Americans should preferentially define their ingroups on broader social categories, whereas East Asians should define their ingroups with a focus on preexisting relationships established through friendship and family (Brewer and Yuki, 2007). Therefore, Ng and colleagues expected that European Canadians, but not East Asians, would show an ingroup bias in face recognition when group membership is arbitrarily determined by a minimal group manipulation: A color-coding system indicated whether one's own personality fits the personality of a displayed person (Study 1) or whether one's preexisting university affiliation fits that of a displayed person (Study 2). Same colors indicated ingroup faces, different colors indicated outgroup faces. In both studies, European Canadians recognized previously observed ingroup faces better than outgroup faces. East Asian Canadians did not show this bias for arbitrarily determined ingroup faces. Hence, the authors concluded that culture moderates the effect of mere social categorization on face recognition. Overall, these studies provide a valuable extension of previous research by introducing a cross-cultural perspective. However, some crucial aspects should be considered in future research in this field.

Do people's world views matter? The why and how.

Over the past decades, personality and social psychologists have extensively investigated the role of self-views in individual functioning. Research on world views, however, has been less well studied due to overly specific conceptualizations, and little research about how and why they impact life outcomes. To answer why and how world views matter, we conducted 7 studies to examine the functions, antecedents, and consequences of generalized beliefs about the world, operationalized as social axioms (Leung et al., 2002). This research focused on 2 axiom factors, namely, social cynicism and reward for application. These axioms were found to explain individual differences in self-views over and above personality traits in Hong Kong and U.S. samples (Study 1) and to explain cultural differences in self-views in addition to self-construals among Mainland Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese, East Asian Canadians, and European Canadians (Study 2). Endorsement of social axioms by participants, their parents, and close friends was collected from Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Canada to infer parental and peer influences on world views (Study 3). World views affected psychological well-being through the mediation of positive self-views across 3 age groups, including children, adolescents, and young adults (Study 4) and over time (Study 5). The mediation of negative self-views was through comparative self-criticism rather than internalized self-criticism (Study 6). Holistic thinking moderated the effect of social cynicism on self-views and psychological well-being (Study 7). These results converge to show that world views as a distal force and self-views as a proximal force matter in people's subjective evaluation of their lives. (PsycINFO Database Record

Will you remember me? Cultural differences in own-group face recognition biases

East Asians often define their ingroups based on preexisting social relationships (e.g., friends, family), whereas North Americans define their ingroups largely based on broader social categories (e.g., race, nationality; Brewer & Yuki, 2007). In the present research we examined the consequences of this cultural difference for own-group face recognition biases. In Study 1, European Canadians and first-generation East Asian Canadians were assigned to minimal groups. Consistent with previous findings, European Canadians showed superior memory for own-group faces; however, as expected, first-generation East Asian Canadians did not. In Study 2, using university affiliation as the experimentally manipulated social group, European Canadians again showed superior memory for own-group faces, whereas first-generation East Asian Canadians did not. The results are consistent with current theorizing and suggest that the effect of mere social categorization on face recognition is moderated by culture.

Re-configuring Asian Canadian Critique Beyond the Nation

As we write this editorial, we have before us four special issues of Canadian Literature that have been dedicated to Asian Canadian literature. In the 1990s, special issues were published on “South Asian Connections” (132, 1992) and “East Asian-Canadian Connections” (140, 1994). In editorials published in both issues, then-editor Bill New grapples with the object posited by the topics at hand. On the one hand, writing by or about South and East Asian Canadians has yielded a significant but neglected body of work. On the other hand, New is acutely aware that these very categories may be misleading, incomplete, or even complicit in the histories of racism. Writing about Asian characters in Canadian fiction, he says, “human sympathy can sometimes still function as a barrier, expressing solidarity at one remove; sometimes it is an act that conceptualizes itself as generosity rather than as a tacit declaration of identity—because fundamentally it assumes that the norms of the cultural ‘inside’ will never change” (New 6). Liberal acceptance and national belonging are only partial solutions as they respond to racism while leaving structural exclusions intact.

Cultural differences in indecisiveness: The role of naïve dialecticism

East Asians exhibit naïve dialecticism, a set of worldviews that tolerates contradictions. As influenced by naïve dialecticism, East Asians are more likely to hold and less likely to change ambivalent attitudes, compared with European North Americans. If East Asians have a heightened tendency to see both positive and negative aspects of an object or issue, but a lesser inclination to resolve these inconsistencies, East Asians (vs. European North Americans) may experience more difficulty in committing to an action, and thus be more indecisive. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found that East Asian Canadians scored higher on a measure of chronic indecisiveness than did European Canadians and South Asian Canadians, and that naïve dialecticism and need for cognition mediated the relationship between culture and indecisiveness. These results add to the extant literature on indecisiveness, demonstrating cultural variations in indecisiveness and an underlying cultural factor that is responsible for these cultural differences.

Cognitive Aspects of Sexual Functioning: Differences Between East Asian-Canadian and Euro-Canadian Women

The purpose of this study was to investigate the sexual beliefs of female undergraduates, as well as the thoughts they experience during sexual experiences. The study aimed to determine potential differences in these variables between East Asian-Canadians and Euro-Canadians, as well as the influence of acculturation on these variables. In addition, the relationships between sexual beliefs, automatic thoughts, and specific aspects of sexual functioning were examined. Euro-Canadian (n = 77) and East Asian-Canadian (n = 123) undergraduate women completed the Sexual Dysfunctional Beliefs Questionnaire, the Sexual Modes Questionnaire, the Female Sexual Function Index, and the Vancouver Index of Acculturation. East Asian women endorsed almost all sexual beliefs assessed in this study more than did Euro-Canadian women, and endorsement of these beliefs was associated with acculturation. In addition, East Asian-Canadian and Euro-Canadian women differed in the frequency of experiencing negative automatic thoughts. Results also revealed associations between difficulties in sexual functioning, and both sexual beliefs and automatic thoughts. Together, these results provide preliminary support for the hypothesis that differences in cognitive aspects of sexuality may underlie the differences in sexual functioning previously observed between these two groups.

Visualizing the Good Life: A Cross-Cultural Analysis

How can we visualize similarity and difference across cultural conceptions of a good or worthy life? To examine the internal structure of such conceptions, we asked 584 university students from mainland China and Canada to indicate the relative importance of 30 elements or criteria commonly used in defining a good life. Statistical comparison and multidimensional scaling were used to reveal the form and extent of group commonalities and differences on the criteria and their meaning in relation to underlying dimensions of individual and cultural variation. The results suggested that South Asian Canadians were more oriented towards moral, spiritual, and beneficent concerns in envisioning a good life than were the mainland Chinese and Western European Canadians. The Chinese, for their part, tended to emphasize practical, prudential, and socially defined goods. This contrasted with the Western European Canadians, who showed more preference for personally defined, internal goods. East Asian Canadians fell between Chinese and Western European Canadians in overall orientation, reflecting their biculturality. All groups placed heavy emphasis on close and enduring relationships.

Culture Moderates the Pliability of Ambivalent Attitudes

Ambivalent attitudes are comprised of conflicting components. In response to this evaluative conflict, North Americans are more likely to change high ambivalent attitudes than low ambivalent attitudes. However, East Asians exhibit greater tolerance for inconsistencies than do North Americans. Hence, we hypothesized that culture would interact with ambivalence in influencing the degree of attitude change in response to a persuasive attempt. Results indicated that culture significantly moderated the relationship between ambivalence and attitude pliability, such that ambivalence and the degree of attitude change were positively associated for European Canadians but not for East Asian Canadians. These results add to the extant literature on attitudinal ambivalence, demonstrating cultural variability in the pliability of ambivalent attitudes.

Cultural Influences on Stigmatization of Problem Gambling: East Asian and Caucasian Canadians

Cultural influences on problem gambling stigma were examined using a between subject vignette study design. Students of East Asian (n=64) and Caucasian (n=50) ancestry recruited from a Canadian University rated a vignette describing either an East Asian problem gambler or a Caucasian problem gambler on a measure of attitudinal social distance. In accordance with the hypothesis, a factorial ANOVA revealed that East Asian Canadians stigmatize problem gambling more than Caucasian Canadians. Moreover, East Asian participants stigmatized the East Asian individual described in the vignette more than they did the Caucasian individual. Individuals with gambling problems were generally not perceived as being dangerous. However, participants who perceived problem gambling as a dangerous condition wanted more social distance than those who did not perceive individuals with a gambling problem as dangerous.

It was meant to happen: Explaining cultural variations in fate attributions.

People often perceive important and improbable life outcomes as "meant to happen," that is, predetermined and inevitable. In 4 studies, we constructed diverse measures of such fate attributions and examined the cultural correlates of this attributional tendency, focusing on ethnic culture and religious affiliation differences. Independently of ethnic culture, Christians were found to endorse fate attributions more than did the nonreligious; and independently of religious affiliation, East Asian Canadians attributed events to fate more than did European Canadians. Consistent with theoretical predictions, the religious affiliation difference was mediated by belief in God, whereas the ethnic cultural difference was mediated by a measure of causal complexity, although not by a measure of acculturation. Experimentally inducing thoughts of causal complexity in one domain increased fate attributions in unrelated domains. These results point to 2 independent psychological sources of fate attributions which also explain observed cultural differences in this tendency.