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

Abstract

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:

• Interoception
• Culture
• Self-awareness
• Body representation
• Face perception.

Notes

1. This study was funded by the European Research Council Staring Investigator Grant (ERC-2010-StG-262853) and the European Platform for Life Sciences, Mind Sciences and Humanities Grant (Volkswagen Foundation), to MT.