Culture, Attention, and Mental Health: Recent Empirical Findings on Visual Scenes and Its Influence on Culture-Bound Syndromes

Under the rubric of interdependent versus independent social orientation and holistic versus analytic cognition, cultural psychologists have demonstrated that there are substantial cultural variations in social cognition. Empirical evidence converges to demonstrate that, in a society where interdependent social orientation and holistic cognition have historically developed, people are more prone to attend to target information, while being sensitive to the context, relationship, and situation that surround the target (context-oriented attention). However, in a society where independent social orientation and analytic cognition have historically developed, people are more prone to attend to what they think is the most salient and important information, while paying little attention to its context, relationship, and situation (object-oriented attention). Until recently, the applications of these findings in the field of mental health science have not been fully discussed. This chapter begins by reviewing the theoretical framework and the cognitive and neural empirical evidence that demonstrate cultural variations in attention. It then introduces a series of studies that examine cross-cultural variations in stress perception between people in independent versus interdependent social orientation. Finally, it reviews a strand of research that could be considered one of many important candidates to further advance basic research on attention to more applied research in the field of mental health, which includes taijinkyofusho (TKS), hikikomori (social withdrawal)/NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) common in Japan, versus social phobia common in North America. The chapter ends with a discussion of a possible collaboration between cultural neuroscience and mental health science.