Shinobu Kitayama: Cultural Neuroscience of Perception: Implications for Art and Art Appreciation

Neuroaesthetics | Symposium


Symposium im ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie,
22.-24. November 2012
In Kooperation und mit Unterstützung der Gemeinnützigen
Hertie-Stiftung.


Numerous studies conducted under the banner of cultural
psychology during
the last two decades have documented substantial cultural
variation in
attention and perception. This literature has made three
important points.
First, whereas people in Western cultures tend to place a greater
emphasis on an object in lieu of its context, those in Eastern
cultures tend to be more holistically attentive to both the
object and its context and closely attuned to the relationship
between the two.
Second, although the origin of this cultural difference is
multifaceted,
one potent factor is the culturally dominant mode of the self and
social relations.
The object-focused perception and the holistic perception have
been traced back, respectively, to an independent or an
interdependent form of the self and social relations.
Third, although behavioral evidence is indispensable,
neuroscience investigations of culture and perception have
presented a strikingly strong promise, beginning to uncover
important neural bases of the cultural variation in attention and
perception.
In this lecture, I will review evidence pertaining to each of
these points and discuss some implications for cultural
variations in art forms and art appreciation.

Dr. Shinobu Kitayama is Robert B. Zajonc Professor of Psychology
at the
University of Michigan. He also directs the University’s Center
for Culture, Mind,
and the Brain. Over the last two decades, he investigated
cultural variations
in self and other related psychological processes including
cognition, emotion,
and motivation. Most recently, he has started to examine the
neural basis of
these cultural variations, with the ultimate goal to better
understand the
nature of the mutually constitutive process between cultural
beliefs and practices and the human brain. Before Michigan, he
taught at Oregon, Kyoto, Stanford, and Chicago.
He was a Fellow, twice, at the Center for Advanced Studies
in
Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, CA (1995–1996, 2007–2008). A
recent recipient of
a Guggenheim Fellowship, he has been inducted to the American
Academy of
Arts and Sciences. His work on culture and self with Hazel Rose
Markus
(Psychological Review, 1991) is one of the most frequently cited
in the entire field of social and behavioral sciences.