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Shaila Hussain

Greenwich University, UK

Presentation Title:

Evaluating whether living in an individualist (UK) or collectivist (Pakistan) culture can magnitude of ‘Self’ and ‘We’ prioritisation effects

Abstract

Culture can be intrinsically linked to two common factors distinguishing two cultures' in-group and out-group goals. Therefore, humans may process information from an individual perspective or as part of a group. For example, categorising the ‘self’ and the ‘others’ into in and out-groups can identify how strongly people commiserate when they watch simple actions. One of the most prominent values dimensions which differentiates between cultures is the view of the relationship between the individual and the collective. The ‘self’ holds a significant influence on the cognitive system. For instance, there are effects on perceptual judgements, such as an association between shape-labelling, whereby individuals are likely to respond quicker and more accurately at determining shape-labelling pairs if it correlates with the individual's own identity than if it was associated with others. This study aimed to 1) explore how individualism and collectivism relate to self and we-prioritisation within the two cultural groups i.e., Pakistan and the UK; 2) compare cultural values within two cultural groups using the Cultural Value Scale (CVS). The experiment applied ‘self’ and ‘we’ prioritisation by adapting a shape-label matching task demonstrating whether cognitive processing is susceptible to ‘self’ or ‘we’ prioritisation. Thirteen participants from Pakistan and twelve from the UK were recruited. A novel facet of the study is the significant difference found between individual and group means. Therefore, to better understand the relationship between cognition and culture variations, it is suggested to employ a larger sample size in a controlled environment in the context of Pakistan and the UK to achieve higher significant results.

Biography

Shaila Hussain is an experienced lecturer in health and psychology. She has completed her MPH in Public Health from King’s College, London and an MSc in Psychology from Northumbria University, Newcastle. She is an active researcher with several publications in the domains of public health and psychology. She has recently co-authored a book chapter on behavioral addiction. Her areas of interest are addiction, cultural differences and art-based therapy.