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Cross-cultural and hemispheric laterality effects on the ensemble coding of emotion in facial crowds

  • Original Research Article
  • Published:
Culture and Brain

A Correction to this article was published on 22 December 2017

This article has been updated

Abstract

In many social situations, we make a snap judgment about crowds of people relying on their overall mood (termed “crowd emotion”). Although reading crowd emotion is critical for interpersonal dynamics, the sociocultural aspects of this process have not been explored. The current study examined how culture modulates the processing of crowd emotion in Korean and American observers. Korean and American (non-East Asian) participants were briefly presented with two groups of faces that were individually varying in emotional expressions and asked to choose which group between the two they would rather avoid. We found that Korean participants were more accurate than American participants overall, in line with the framework on cultural viewpoints: Holistic versus analytic processing in East Asians versus Westerners. Moreover, we found a speed advantage for other-race crowds in both cultural groups. Finally, we found different hemispheric lateralization patterns: American participants were more accurate to perceive the facial crowd to be avoided when it was presented in the left visual field than the right visual field, indicating a right hemisphere advantage for processing crowd emotion of both European American and Korean facial crowds. However, Korean participants showed weak or nonexistent laterality effects, with a slight right hemisphere advantage for European American facial crowds and no advantage in perceiving Korean facial crowds. Instead, Korean participants showed positive emotion bias for own-race faces. This work suggests that culture plays a role in modulating our crowd emotion perception of groups of faces and responses to them.

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  • 22 December 2017

    In the original publication of the article under Introduction, the sentence in the second paragraph that reads as, “Therefore, none of the existing studies…Westerners” should read as, “Therefore, none of the existing studies on crowd emotion perception allows us to directly compare potential differences between Easterners and Westerners in extracting crowd emotion from groups of faces of Easterners vs Westerners.”

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health R01MH101194 to K.K. and to R.B.A., Jr., and by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (NRF-2016R1A2B4016171) to S.C.C. Data collection was conducted at the Pennsylvania State University for American participants and at Yonsei University for Korean participants. Informed written consent was obtained in all studies according to the procedures of the Institutional Review Board at the Pennsylvania State University and at Yonsei University. The participants received a course credit for their participation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, 02129, USA

    Hee Yeon Im & Kestutis Kveraga

  2. Graduate Program in Cognitive Science, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea

    Sang Chul Chong & Jisoo Sun

  3. Department of Psychology, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea

    Sang Chul Chong

  4. Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA

    Troy G. Steiner, Daniel N. Albohn & Reginald B. Adams Jr.

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  1. Hee Yeon Im
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  2. Sang Chul Chong
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  4. Troy G. Steiner
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Contributions

H. Y. Im, R. B. Adams, and K. Kveraga developed the study concept and all the authors contributed to study design. Testing and data collection were performed by J. Sun, T. G. Steiner, and D. N. Albohn. H. Y. Im analyzed the data and all the authors wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kestutis Kveraga.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of the article.

Additional information

A correction to this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s40167-017-0058-7.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Instruction for Experiment 1

a. Instruction written in Korean (for Korean participants)

“매 시행마다 두 그룹 (왼쪽, 오른쪽)의 얼굴들이 제시됩니다. 모든 얼굴들은 서로 다른 표정을 가지고 있습니다. 두 그룹의 얼굴들 중에서 어느 그룹의 얼굴을 피하고 싶은지 선택하는 과제입니다. 왼쪽 그룹을 피하려면 ‘F’ 키를, 오른쪽 그룹을 피하려면 ‘J’ 키를 눌러주세요. 매 시행 후 피드백이 주어집니다. 정답은 전체적으로 더 부정적인 그룹을 선택하는 것입니다. 최대한 빨리, 그리고 정확하게 반응해 주시기 바랍니다. 자극은 1초간만 보여집니다. 시작하려면 space key를 눌러주세요.”

b. Instruction written in English (for American participants)

“In this experiment, you will be presented with two crowds of faces with varying emotional expressions. Your task is to choose which of the two groups of people (on the left or right) you would rather avoid. Press ‘F’ for left group, and press’J’ for right group on the display. The stimulus image will be presented very briefly. Please try to make a response as soon as possible. Also, please try to remain as accurate as possible. If you are ready to start, press a space key.”

Appendix 2: Instruction for Experiment 2

a. Instruction for Korean participants

[Korean version as in the actual experimental session] “매 시행마다 두 그룹 (왼쪽, 오른쪽)의 얼굴들이 제시됩니다. 모든 얼굴들은 서로 다른 표정을 가지고 있습니다. 두 그룹의 얼굴들 중에서 어느 그룹의 얼굴을 피하고 싶은지 선택하는 과제입니다. 왼쪽 그룹을 피하려면 F키를, 오른쪽 그룹을 피하려면 J키를 눌러주세요. 매 시행 후 피드백이 주어집니다. 정답은 전체적으로 더 부정적인 그룹을 선택하는 것입니다. 최대한 빨리, 그리고 정확하게 반응해 주시기 바랍니다. 특히, 빠르게 반응하는 것이 중요합니다. 자극에 대한 첫인상을 바탕으로 응답해 주세요. 빠르게 응답한 시행만이 실험 결과 분석에 사용될 예정이며, 너무 느리게 응답한 시행은 분석에서 제외됩니다. 자극은 1초간만 보여집니다. 시작하려면 space key를 눌러주세요.”

[English version, translated from Korean] “On each trial, two crowds of faces with varying emotional expressions will be presented for 1 s. Your task is to choose which of the two groups of people (on the left or right) you would rather avoid. Press ‘F’ to avoid left group, and press ‘J’ to avoid right group on the screen. Correct answer is to choose angrier (more negative) crowd on average. Feedback will be provided on each trial. Please try to remain as accurate as possible. However, we require fast responses for our analyses: Accuracy at the expense of speed will undermine our study, because responses that are too slow cannot be analyzed. Please rely on your first impression of the stimuli and try to make response as quickly as you can.”

b. Instruction for American participants

On each trial, two crowds of faces with varying emotional expressions will be presented for 1 s. Your task is to choose which of the two groups of people (on the left or right) you would rather avoid. Press ‘F’ to avoid left group, and press ‘J’ to avoid right group on the screen. Correct answer is to choose angrier (more negative) crowd on average. Feedback will be provided on each trial. Please try to remain as fast as possible. However, we require accurate responses for our analyses: Speed at the expense of accuracy will undermine our study, because only accurate responses can be analyzed. Please try to make response as accurately as you can.

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Im, H.Y., Chong, S.C., Sun, J. et al. Cross-cultural and hemispheric laterality effects on the ensemble coding of emotion in facial crowds. Cult. Brain 5, 125–152 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40167-017-0054-y

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