Even subtle cultural differences affect face tuning

Abstract

Culture shapes social cognition in many ways. Yet cultural impact on face tuning remains largely unclear. Here typically developing females and males from the French-speaking part of Switzerland were presented with a set of Arcimboldo-like Face-n-Food images composed of food ingredients and in different degree resembling a face. The outcome had been compared with previous findings obtained in young adults of the South-West Germany. In that study, males exhibit higher thresholds for face tuning on the Face-n-Food task than females. In Swiss participants, no gender differences exist in face tuning. Strikingly, males from the French-speaking part of Switzerland possess higher sensitivity to faces than their German peers, whereas no difference in face tuning occurs between females. The outcome indicates that even relatively subtle cultural differences as well as culture by gender interaction can modulate social cognition. Clarification of the nature of cultural impact on face tuning as well as social cognition at large is of substantial value for understanding a wide range of neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions.

Fig 1. Examples of the Giuseppe Arcimboldo style.

‘Autumn’ (left) and ‘The Greengrocer’ (right) by Guiseppe Arcimboldo (1526–1593), an Italian painter best known for creating fascinating, often grotesque and allegoric, imaginative portraits composed of fruits, vegetables, plants, tree roots, flowers, and even books and human/animal bodies (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Arcimboldo; public domain).

Fig 2. Examples of images used.

The least resembling face (left panel) and most resembling face (right panel) images from the Face-n-Food task (from Pavlova, M.A., Scheffler, K., Sokolov, A.N. 2015. Face-n-Food: Gender Differences in Tuning to Faces. PLoS ONE 10(7): e0130363. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0130363; the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license).

Fig 3. Tuning to faces.

The average image number, on which resembling a face on the Face-n-Food task (face response) was initially reported, separately for female and male Swiss and German participants. The data for German participants had been reported earlier (Pavlova, M.A., Scheffler, K., Sokolov, A.N. 2015. Face-n-Food: Gender Differences in Tuning to Faces. PLoS ONE 10(7): e0130363. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0130363). Significant difference in thresholds for face tuning between different groups of participants is indicated by asterisk and horizontal bars. Vertical bars represent SEM.

Fig 4. Percentage of face responses for each Face-n-Food image.

The image number reflects its face resemblance (1 –the least recognizable, 10 –the most recognizable as a face). Vertical bars represent 95% confidence interval, CI. The data for German participants had been reported earlier (Pavlova, M.A., Scheffler, K., Sokolov, A.N. 2015. Face-n-Food: Gender Differences in Tuning to Faces. PLoS ONE 10(7): e0130363. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0130363).