University of Michigan Vision Study Says Asians, Whites See World Differently
WASHINGTON
Asians and North Americans really do see the world differently, according to researchers at the University of Michigan.
Shown a photograph, North American students of European background paid more attention to the object in the foreground of a scene, while students from China spent more time studying the background and taking in the whole scene, the researchers say.
The researchers led by Dr. Hannah-Faye Chua and Dr. Richard Nisbett tracked the eye movements of the students — 25 European Americans and 27 native Chinese — to determine where they were looking in a picture and how long they focused on a particular area.
“They literally are seeing the world differently,” said Nisbett, who believes the differences are cultural.
“Asians live in more socially complicated world than we do,” he said in a telephone interview. “They have to pay more attention to others than we do. We are individualists. We can be bulls in a china shop, they can’t afford it.”
