Abstract
Cross-cultural similarities and differences in impressions of age-related gait qualities were investigated. Specifically, Korean subjects' perceptions of the age, sex, and traits of 5 to 70 year old American men and women, whose gaits were depicted in point-light displays, were compared with American subjects' perceptions documented by Montepare and Zebrowitz-McArthur (1988). Substantial cross-cultural agreement was found for perceptions of the walkers' age and sex. Moreover, with walkers' perceived age and sex controlled, both American and Korean ratings of the walkers' strength and happiness showed a linear decrease with age, and ratings of their sexiness showed a curvilinear relationship to age. Whereas American ratings of dominance showed a linear decrease with walkers' age, no such relationship was observed for Korean ratings. The findings supported both the ecological theory of social perception and an interactionist model of cross-cultural perception, which suggest that some reactions to gait information are universal while others are determined by culturally specific values which may influence the movements of younger and older individuals and the meanings perceivers associate with these movements.
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This research was supported in part by BRSG S07 RR07044 awarded by the Brandeis Research Support Grant Program, Division of Research Resources, NIH. Thanks are extended to Terry Amgott-Kwan who helped prepare the gait displays and to Professor Jae-Ho Cha and the Department of Psychology at Seoul National University who provided laboratory space, access to subjects, and other research support. We also thank Mr. Ki-Duk Nam who assisted in recruiting subjects and running the experiment. Finally, we thank Chung-Sook Lee of Ewha Women's University for her help in preparing the Korean questionnaires.
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Montepare, J.M., Zebrowitz, L.A. A cross-cultural comparison of impressions created by age-related variations in gait. J Nonverbal Behav 17, 55–68 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00987008
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00987008