My face, my heart: cultural differences in integrated bodily self-awareness

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Electronic versions

  • Lara Maister
    Royal Holloway University of London
  • Manos Tsakiris

Body-awareness is produced by an integration of both interoceptive and exteroceptive bodily signals. However, previous investigations into cultural differences in bodily self-awareness have only studied these two aspects in isolation. We investigated the interaction between interoceptive and exteroceptive self-processing in East Asian and Western participants. During an interoceptive awareness task, self-face observation improved performance of those with initially low awareness in the Western group, but did not benefit the East Asian participants. These results suggest that the integrated, coherent experience of the body differs between East Asian and Western cultures. For Western participants, viewing one's own face may activate a bodily self-awareness which enhances processing of other bodily information, such as interoceptive signals. Instead, for East Asian individuals, the external appearance of the self may activate higher-level, social aspects of self-identity, reflecting the importance of the sociocultural construct of "face" in East Asian cultures.

Keywords

  • Adolescent, Asian Continental Ancestry Group, Awareness, Body Image, Culture, European Continental Ancestry Group, Face, Female, Humans, Male, Self Concept, Young Adult
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)10-16
Number of pages7
JournalCognitive Neuroscience
Volume5
Issue number1
Early online date28 Jun 2013
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2014
Externally publishedYes
View graph of relations