Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Oct 15;14(10):e0223358.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0223358. eCollection 2019.

Biased cognition in East Asian and Western cultures

Jenny Yiend  1 , Julia André  2 , Louise Smith  1 , Lu Hua Chen  3 , Timothea Toulopoulou  3 , Eric Chen  2 , Pak Sham  2 , Brian Parkinson  4
Affiliations

Biased cognition in East Asian and Western cultures

Jenny Yiend et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

The majority of cognitive bias research has been conducted in Western cultures. We examined cross-cultural differences in cognitive biases, comparing Westerners' and East Asians' performance and acculturation following migration to the opposite culture. Two local (UK, Hong Kong) and four migrant (short-term and long-term migrants to each culture) samples completed culturally validated tasks measuring attentional and interpretation bias. Hong Kong residents were more positively biased than people living in the UK on several measures, consistent with the lower prevalence of psychological disorders in East Asia. Migrants to the UK had reduced positive biases on some tasks, while migrants to Hong Kong were more positive, compared to their respective home counterparts, consistent with acculturation in attention and interpretation biases. These data illustrate the importance of cultural validation of findings and, if replicated, would have implications for the mental health and well-being of migrants.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Pattern of acculturation effects across three measures of cognitive bias.
(A) Hong Kong migrants to UK. (B) UK migrants to Hong Kong. Values are standardized values (Z scores) of the bias score means provided in Table 2, to allow meaningful comparison of the pattern of data across tasks with different dependent measures. Abbreviations: SST–scrambled sentences task. HK–Hong Kong. UK–United Kingdom. * indicates this task showed a significant linear trend at p < .05.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Mathews A, MacLeod C. Cognitive vulnerability to emotional disorders. Annu Rev Clin Psychol 2005;1:167–195. 10.1146/annurev.clinpsy.1.102803.143916 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Pool E, Brosch T, Delplanque S, Sander D. Attentional bias for positive emotional stimuli: A meta-analytic investigation. Psychol Bull 2016;142(1):79–106. 10.1037/bul0000026 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Thoern HA, Grueschow M, Ehlert U, Ruff CC, Kleim B. Attentional bias towards positive emotion predicts stress resilience. PLoS ONE 2016;11(3). - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kress L, Aue T. Learning to look at the bright side of life: Attention bias modification training enhances optimism bias. Front Human Neurosci 2019;13. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Sanchez A, Vazquez C. Looking at the eyes of happiness: Positive emotions mediate the influence of life satisfaction on attention to happy faces. J Posit Psychol 2014;9(5):435–448.

Publication types