title: How much information? East Asian and North American cultural products and information search performance.
abstract: Literature in cultural psychology suggests that compared with North Americans, East Asians prefer context-rich cultural products (e.g., paintings and photographs). The present article further examines the preferred amount of information in cultural products produced by East Asians and North Americans (Study 1: Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference posters; Study 2: government and university portal pages). The authors found that East Asians produced more information-rich products than did North Americans. Study 3 further examined people's information search speed when identifying target objects on mock webpages containing large amounts of information. The results indicated that East Asians were faster than North Americans in dealing with information on mock webpages with large amounts of information. Finally, the authors found that there were cultural differences as well as similarities in functional and aesthetic preferences regarding styles of information presentation. The interplay between cultural products and skills for accommodating to the cultural products is discussed.
authors.affiliation: University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
authors.forename: Huaitang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Takahiko
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Masuda
authors.forename: Kenichi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ito
authors.forename: Marghalara
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rashid
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001154:Art; D044466:Asian People / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D003071:Cognition; D003226:Congresses as Topic; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D003469:Culture; D004954:Esthetics; D005202:Asia, Eastern / Q000208:ethnology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D057226:Information Seeking Behavior; D020407:Internet; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes; D009656:North America / Q000208:ethnology; D010781:Photography; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D014796:Visual Perception; D044465:White People / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult