Culture and Perception

1. Culture and Perception With adaptations from Ronald Fischer PSYC 338

2. Overview • Perceptual sets and culture • Types of perceptions • Visual illusions and pictorial perceptions • Perception of music

3. Two fundamental perspectives Nativism (Gibson, 1950) Empiricism (Brunswik, 1956)

4. Perceptual sets • Environment shapes our perception • We create perceptual expectations • Increase particular interpretations (speed & efficiency) • Culturally functional and adaptive (mostly)

5. Culture and Sensory Functions • Conditions in the physical environment • Environmental conditions • Genetic factors • Cultural Differences in the interaction with the environment

6. Important Senses • Vision • Colour, depths • Hearing • Pitch, tone, mode, rhythm, etc. • Taste • Smell • Touch • Time

7. Visual Illusions • Ecological cue validity • Illusions occur when previously learned interpretations of cues are misapplied because of unusual or misleading characteristics of stimuli

8. The horizontal-vertical illusion

12. The Sander parallelogram illusion

19. What about if it was like this?

22. The perspective drawing illusion

24. Some early experiments • Optical illusions (Segall, Campbell & Herskovits, 1966) • Three samples from industrialised countries (US, South Africa) • Five samples from tribes living in dense tropical forests (Fang, Bete, Ijaw, Dahomea, Hanunoo) • Two samples from tribes living in open land, but in circular houses (Zulu, Bushmen) • Some of these tribes (Ankole, Toro, Songe, Bete) were not used to two-dimensional representations of three dimensional objects (e.g., photographs, drawings, murals, paintings)

25. Some explanations • Hypotheses about cultural differences • Carpentered World Hypothesis • Foreshortening Hypothesis: Front-horizontal foreshortening theory • Sophistication Hypothesis: Symbolising three dimensions in two

26. Carpentered World Theory

27. New Synergies

28. New Synergies

29. The Sander parallelogram illusion

30. Front-horizontal foreshortening theory

31. The perspective drawing illusion

32. Symbolising three dimensions in two

33. Perception of Depth • The organization of sensations in three dimensions even though the image on the eye’s retina is two dimensional

34. Challenges to this eco-cultural explanation • Effect of retinal pigmentation (Pollack, 1970) • Some support (e.g., Bornstein, 1973) • Other factors at play: • Sensitivity to different colours (colour naming) • Exposure to ultraviolet rays • Dietary differences • Age • Education

35. Implications • Design of instructions, manuals, safety signs, etc. • Education campaigns • Use in educational settings

36. Perception of Colour

37. Perception of Music • Relatively neglected topic • Western societies (incl. Psychologists) – literate societies; technology (paintings, photography) = emphasis on visual stimuli • Many traditional /non-Western societies = oral traditions, music and rhythm => Task!

38. Musical functions (Merriam, 1964) • Emotional expression • Physical response • Aesthetic enjoyment and entertainment • Communication & Symbolic representation • Enforcing conformity to social norms • Validating social institutions and religious rituals • Enables continuity and stability of culture • Integration of society

39. Summary • Culture influences our perceptions of the environment we are living in through perceptual sets • Cultural, ecological, biological and physiological influences interact • Perception research = example of the influence of culture and Zeitgeist on research agendas