The Experimental Study On The Effect Of The Han And Mongolian College Students’ Self-construal On Perception

Self-construal has been a core topic of psychology, in recent years, withthe study of psychological framework transform to culture-society-psychology-brain-and gene patterns, the research on cross-culturalpsychology of self-construal is received widespread attention. In addition tothe study of cultural differences on self-construal, the researchers haveincreasingly keen to study the relationship between self-construal andindividual’s psychological processes (such as perception, memory, thought,etc.) and behaviors.It has been found that there is a typical cultural difference inself-construal which can also influence individual’s cognitive processes andexplicit behaviors. People affected by East Asian culture regard collectivismas their primary value orientation, and prone to form an interdependentself-construal; while people who affected by the cultural of Western Europeand North America regard individualism as their primary value orientation,and more likely to form an independent self-construct. Different types ofself-construal will also affect individual’s perceptual features. Individualswith independent self-construal tend to focus on a salient objectindependently of its context, and likely to form a analytic perception;individuals with interdependent self-construal are more concerned with thecontext and the relationship between the object and the context in which theobject is located, and tend to form a holistic perception.Previous studies mainly focused on cross-cultural comparative studybetween European-American individuals and East Asia individuals (Japanese,Chinese), while the comparative study of Mongolians are less. This researchtakes Mongolians as participants for the first time, and use the self-construalscale (SCS) to investigate the features of Mongolian and the Han collegestudents’ self-construal under different cultural backgrounds, through behavioral experiments and eye-movement technology to study the effect ofHan and Mongolian college students’ self-construal on their perception, andthen through cultural priming paradigm to further explore the perceptualcharacteristics under self-construal priming, it makes a tentative research onthe relationship among the culture-self-cognition (perception). The resultsshowed that:(1)There is a significant difference between Mongolian and the Hancollege students’ self-construal. In the Han college students’s self-construal,there are more interdependent than independent self-construal, and theinterdependent self-construal is the leading type. In the Outer Mongoliancollege students’s self-construal, there are more independent thaninterdependent self-construal, and the independent self-construal is theleading type. In the Inner Mongolian college students’s self-construal, thereare more interdependent than independent self-construal.(2)The differences between Mongolian and the Han college students’self-construal lead to the differences of their perception. In the letterdiscrimination task, the Han and the Inner Mongolian college students withinterdependent self-construal are faster at the global level then the local level,and prone to global-dominant perception. While the Outer Mongolian collegestudents with independent self-construal are faster at the local level then theglobal leve, and prone to local-dominant perception.(3)The data of eye-movement experiment indicates that when watchingthe pictures, Mongolian and the Han college students show more fixations andfixation counts of objects than contexts. when watching the object-contextincongruent pictures, Mongolian and the Han college students showsignificant differences on several eye movement index between the objectsarea and the context area: Outer Mongolian participants show more fixationsand fixation counts in the objects area then the Han and Inner Mongolianparticipants; while the Han and Inner Mongolian participants show morefixations and fixation counts in the context area. These findings indicate thatthe Han and Inner Mongolian college students are more concerned with the context and the relationship between the object and the context, while OuterMongolian college students are more concerned with the salient objects.(4)The cultural priming study shows that the Mongolian and Hanstudents performed better at the local level then the global level on letterdiscrimination task under independent self-construal priming, and prone tolocal-dominant perception;while under interdependent self-construal priming,the Mongolian and Han students performed better at the global level then thelocal level on letter discrimination task, and prone to global-dominantperception.Therefore, the following conclusions can be drawn:1.Inner Mongolian and the Han college students prone to holdinterdependent self-construal, Outer Mongolian college students prone to holdindependent self-construal, cultural diversity and cultural integration have animpact on self-construal.2.The behavioral and eye-movement studies show that different types ofself-construal have a effect on individuals’perceptual cognition. The Han andInner Mongolian college students hold a holistic cognition, while OuterMongolian college students hold a analytic cognition.3.Under the condition of cultural priming, the immediate changes ofself-construal lead to changes in perceptual processing, indicating that thechanges in the perception caused by the changes of self-construal undercultural priming effects.