Differenze culturali nella percezione multimodale delle emozioni

The research question in the present study concerns how culture shapes the way in which simultaneous facial and vocalization cues are combined in emotion perception. The matter is not whether culture influences such process: cultures supply systems of meaning that make salient different core emotional themes, different sets of emotions, their ostensible expression, and action tendencies. Therefore, research doesn’t regard whether, but how and at what level of analysis culture shapes these processes (Matsumoto, 2001). Cultural variability was tested within the methodological framework of cultural priming studies (Matsumoto & Yoo, 2006). In such a methodological option culture is not viewed as consensual, enduring, and context-general, but as fragmented, fluctuating, and context-specific (situated cognition model; Oyserman & Sorensen, 2009). Bicultural individuals that, through enduring exposure to at least two cultures, possess systems of meaning and practices of both cultures, can therefore switch between such cultural orientations alternating them depending on the cultural cues (cultural primers) available in the immediate context (cultural frame switching; Hong et al. 2000). The present research investigated cultural differences in the way visual and auditory cues of fear and disgust are combined in emotion perception by Italian-Japanese biculturals primed with Japanese and Italian cultural cues. Bicultural participants were randomly assigned to Italian or Japanese priming conditions and were shown dynamic faces and vocalizations expressing either congruent (i.e., fear-fear) or incongruent (i.e. fear-disgust) emotion and were asked to identify the emotion expressed ignoring the one or the other modality (cross-modal bias paradigm; Bertelson & de Gelder, 2004). The effect of to-be-ignored vocalization cues was larger for participants in the Japanese priming condition, while the effect of to-be-ignored dynamic face cues was larger for participants in the Italian priming condition. This pattern of results was investigated also within current perspectives on embodied cognition, that, regarding emotion perception, assume that perceivers subtly mimic a target’s facial expression, so that contractions in the perceiver’s face generate an afferent muscolar feedback from the face to the brain, leading the perceiver to use this feedback to reproduce and thus understand the perceived expressions (Barsalou, 2009; Niedenthal, 2007). In other words, mimicry reflects internal simulation of perceived emotion in order to facilitate its understanding. A mimicry-interfering (with the facial expressions of fear and disgust; Oberman, Winkielman & Ramachandran, 2007) manipulation with bicultural participants performing the same task above described generated no cultural differences in the effect of to-be-ignored vocalizations, showing that the interference effect of vocalizations on faces turns out to be larger for participants in the Italian priming condition. Altogether, these results can be interpreted within the cultural syndromes highlighting the independent vs. interdependent and socially embedded nature of self, providing meaning systems that encourage and make available a different weighting of nonverbal cues in emotion perception depending on their relying, respectively, on more (or less) face exposure (meant as individual exposure) in modulating social relationships and less (or more) vocal exposure (more subtle and time-dependent than the face) in order to enhance individual standing and autonomy (vs. establish and maintain social harmony and interpersonal respect). Current perspectives sketching how human cognitive functioning works through a situated (Mesquita, Barrett, & Smith, 2010) and embodied (simulative) mind (Barsalou, 2009), and their implications in emotion perception are briefly described as the theoretical framework guiding the research question addressed in the empirical contribution.