The Soft Embodiment of Culture: Camera Angles and Motion through Time and Space

Cultural assumptions about one's relation to others and one's place in the world can be literally embodied in the way one cognitively maps out one 's position and motion in time and space. In three experiments, we examined the psychological perspective that Asian American and Euro-Ame...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inPsychological science Vol. 18; no. 9; pp. 824 - 830
Main Authors Leung, Angela K.-y., Cohen, Dov
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA Blackwell Publishing 01.09.2007
SAGE Publications
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Asian Americans
Asian Americans - psychology
Attitudes
Beliefs
Cognition
Cognition & reasoning
Cognition - physiology
Cognitive models
Cognitive psychology
Comprehension - physiology
Contrapuntal motion
Culture
Embodiment
European Continental Ancestry Group - psychology
Friends - psychology
Humans
Imagination - physiology
Injunctions
Language
Literary characters
Metaphor
Motion
Movement - physiology
Narration
Narrative point of view
Protagonists
Psychology
Reaction Time - physiology
Social Behavior
Social norms
Social Perception
Social psychology
Social situations
Space
Space Perception - physiology
Time
Time Perception - physiology
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Cultural assumptions about one's relation to others and one's place in the world can be literally embodied in the way one cognitively maps out one 's position and motion in time and space. In three experiments, we examined the psychological perspective that Asian American and Euro-American participants embodied as they both comprehended and produced narratives and mapped out metaphors of time and space. In social situations, Euro-American participants were more likely to embody their own perspective and a sense of their own motion (rather than those of a friend), whereas Asian American participants were more likely to embody a friend's perspective and sense of motion (rather than their own). We discuss how these psychological perspectives represent the soft embodiment of culture by implicitly instantiating cultural injunctions (a) to think about how you look to others and to harmonize with them or (b) to know yourself, trust yourself, and act with confidence.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ObjectType-Article-2
ObjectType-Feature-1
ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01986.x