Face processing in Malaysian Chinese adults

Cross-cultural studies have identified a distinct holistic-analytic pattern that observers employ in various cognitive and perceptual tasks. Recent face perception studies utilizing eye tracking methodologies have also revealed distinct Eastern and Western viewing patterns when recognizing identities and emotions. However, studies exploring genetic and cultural factors found that British born Chinese observers employed either Eastern or Western eye movement strategies, suggesting that a simple Eastern-Western distinction does not fully explain the diversity in observers’ eye movement strategies. Although Malaysia is an East Asian country, it is strongly multicultural and heavily influenced by Western culture. This thesis aimed to investigate Malaysian Chinese participants’ eye movement strategy and recognition abilities by requiring participants to perform static and dynamic face recognition, and emotion recognition tasks on African, East Asian, and Western Caucasian faces

Selection and validation of emotional videos: Dataset of professional and amateur videos that elicit basic emotions

This article describes the process of selecting a collection of professional and amateur videos that elicit five basic emotions (i.e., happiness, fear, disgust, anger, and sadness) and validating these videos in three groups of participants (i.e., Chinese from China, Chinese from Malaysia, and Bumiputera from Malaysia). In the video selection phase, professional videos, which were Western movie trailers, were selected from IMDb (Internet Movie Database) and amateur videos were selected from YouTube. The researchers selected videos that display five basic emotions, identified the time frames with the strongest display of emotion, and rated the emotional intensity of each video on a 5-point Likert scale. After the initial stage of selection, two other researchers performed an emotion recognition task by watching the videos without audio to ensure that the emotions can be elicited without understanding the language. This data was used to refine the final selection of 20 professional videos and 20 amateur videos. In the video validation phase, 30 participants were asked to identify and rate the intensity of emotion felt. This article includes a description of the video selection method, a detailed list of the videos selected, and participants' responses and ratings of emotional intensity for the 40 videos

Influences of neurotransmission-related genetic polymorphisms on depression, anxiety and stress

Over 10% of the world population suffer from mental disorders. In particular, depression causes about 800,000 suicide cases annually, while anxiety is the most common mental disorder. Stresses from work, life, and health have been identified as the common triggers for the two mental disorders. Eventhough mental disorders are treatable and validated tools are available to diagnose, many individuals are left untreated due to different factors, such as a lack of trained personnel and stigma. Neuroscience research indicates that mental disorders could be hereditary, where genes involved in determining behavioural variants. Disturbance in brain communication, resulting from abnormalities in neurogenesis, neurotransmission, and enzymatic degradation, have led to negative emotional states. This mini-review will highlight some important genes in the neurotransmitter systems and explore the relationship between gene polymorphisms and emotional states (i.e., depression, anxiety, and stress). The genes that will be discussed in this mini-review include brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) which is involved in neuron development, serotonin-transporter-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) and 5- hydroxytryptamine receptor 1A (5-HT1A) which are involved in serotonin neurotransmitter action potential propagation, and monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) and catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT), which are involved in neurotransmitter catabolism

You Look Familiar: How Malaysian Chinese Recognize Faces

East Asian and white Western observers employ different eye movement strategies for a variety of visual processing tasks, including face processing. Recent eye tracking studies on face recognition found that East Asians tend to integrate information holistically by focusing on the nose while white Westerners perceive faces featurally by moving between the eyes and mouth. The current study examines the eye movement strategy that Malaysian Chinese participants employ when recognizing East Asian, white Western, and African faces. Rather than adopting the Eastern or Western fixation pattern, Malaysian Chinese participants use a mixed strategy by focusing on the eyes and nose more than the mouth. The combination of Eastern and Western strategies proved advantageous in participants' ability to recognize East Asian and white Western faces, suggesting that individuals learn to use fixation patterns that are optimized for recognizing the faces with which they are more familiar

To which world regions does the valence–dominance model of social perception apply?

Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence–dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof and Todorov’s methodology across 11 world regions, 41 countries and 11,570 participants. When we used Oosterhof and Todorov’s original analysis strategy, the valence–dominance model generalized across regions. When we used an alternative methodology to allow for correlated dimensions, we observed much less generalization. Collectively, these results suggest that, while the valence–dominance model generalizes very well across regions when dimensions are forced to be orthogonal, regional differences are revealed when we use different extraction methods and correlate and rotate the dimension reduction solution

To which world regions does the valence–dominance model of social perception apply?

Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence–dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof and Todorov’s methodology across 11 world regions, 41 countries and 11,570 participants. When we used Oosterhof and Todorov’s original analysis strategy, the valence–dominance model generalized across regions. When we used an alternative methodology to allow for correlated dimensions, we observed much less generalization. Collectively, these results suggest that, while the valence–dominance model generalizes very well across regions when dimensions are forced to be orthogonal, regional differences are revealed when we use different extraction methods and correlate and rotate the dimension reduction solution.C.L. was supported by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF VRG13-007); L.M.D. was supported by ERC 647910 (KINSHIP); D.I.B. and N.I. received funding from CONICET, Argentina; L.K., F.K. and Á. Putz were supported by the European Social Fund (EFOP-3.6.1.-16-2016-00004; ‘Comprehensive Development for Implementing Smart Specialization Strategies at the University of Pécs’). K.U. and E. Vergauwe were supported by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (PZ00P1_154911 to E. Vergauwe). T.G. is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). M.A.V. was supported by grants 2016-T1/SOC-1395 (Comunidad de Madrid) and PSI2017-85159-P (AEI/FEDER UE). K.B. was supported by a grant from the National Science Centre, Poland (number 2015/19/D/HS6/00641). J. Bonick and J.W.L. were supported by the Joep Lange Institute. G.B. was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency (APVV-17-0418). H.I.J. and E.S. were supported by a French National Research Agency ‘Investissements d’Avenir’ programme grant (ANR-15-IDEX-02). T.D.G. was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. The Raipur Group is thankful to: (1) the University Grants Commission, New Delhi, India for the research grants received through its SAP-DRS (Phase-III) scheme sanctioned to the School of Studies in Life Science; and (2) the Center for Translational Chronobiology at the School of Studies in Life Science, PRSU, Raipur, India for providing logistical support. K. Ask was supported by a small grant from the Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg. Y.Q. was supported by grants from the Beijing Natural Science Foundation (5184035) and CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology. N.A.C. was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (R010138018). We acknowledge the following research assistants: J. Muriithi and J. Ngugi (United States International University Africa); E. Adamo, D. Cafaro, V. Ciambrone, F. Dolce and E. Tolomeo (Magna Græcia University of Catanzaro); E. De Stefano (University of Padova); S. A. Escobar Abadia (University of Lincoln); L. E. Grimstad (Norwegian School of Economics (NHH)); L. C. Zamora (Franklin and Marshall College); R. E. Liang and R. C. Lo (Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman); A. Short and L. Allen (Massey University, New Zealand), A. Ateş, E. Güneş and S. Can Özdemir (Boğaziçi University); I. Pedersen and T. Roos (Åbo Akademi University); N. Paetz (Escuela de Comunicación Mónica Herrera); J. Green (University of Gothenburg); M. Krainz (University of Vienna, Austria); and B. Todorova (University of Vienna, Austria). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.https://www.nature.com/nathumbehav/am2023BiochemistryGeneticsMicrobiology and Plant Patholog

A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries and regions (n = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vesus both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing interventions had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world

Face processing in Malaysian Chinese adults

Cross-cultural studies have identified a distinct holistic-analytic pattern that observers employ in various cognitive and perceptual tasks. Recent face perception studies utilizing eye tracking methodologies have also revealed distinct Eastern and Western viewing patterns when recognizing identities and emotions. However, studies exploring genetic and cultural factors found that British born Chinese observers employed either Eastern or Western eye movement strategies, suggesting that a simple Eastern-Western distinction does not fully explain the diversity in observers’ eye movement strategies. Although Malaysia is an East Asian country, it is strongly multicultural and heavily influenced by Western culture. This thesis aimed to investigate Malaysian Chinese participants’ eye movement strategy and recognition abilities by requiring participants to perform static and dynamic face recognition, and emotion recognition tasks on African, East Asian, and Western Caucasian faces

Sexual dimorphism and attractiveness in Asian and White faces

Marriages between White men and Asian women are over twice as frequent as those between White women and Asian men. Recent research has proposed that this imbalance may be explained by the finding that, on average, White men are perceived as more attractive than Asian men, and Asian women are perceived as more attractive than White women, possibly because Asian faces are perceived as more feminine than White faces. Here, we explore whether Asian faces are perceived as more feminine than White faces. Thirty-five Malaysian Chinese (20 male) and 30 Australian White (12 male) participants manipulated 100 face photographs (50 Asian; 50 White; half male) on a masculinity/femininity axis to optimize attractive appearance. As predicted, White women’s faces were increased more in femininity than Asian women’s faces, and White men’s faces were feminized more than Asian men’s faces to optimize attractiveness. These findings suggest that White faces are perceived as more masculine than Asian faces