In front of a lantern display in Arashiyama, Kyoto.

Author: Sophia Chier | Major: Psychology | Semester: Fall 2022

古いほど良い(Furuihodo yoi): Older is better.

My name is Sophia Chier, and I major in Psychology and minor in Japanese. I have worked as a research assistant in Dr. Scott Eidelman’s SAPP (Social and Political Psychology) lab for the past two years.  For the Fall 2022 semester, I have been studying abroad in Nishinomiya, Japan, and was gifted a Research Grant by the Honors College to pursue research that Dr. Eidelman and I have been interested in regarding differences in social perception between Japanese and American students.  Dr. Eidelman’s lab has been collecting the American data this semester for our study, while I have been collecting it in Japan. As I write this, I am actually still in Japan, so I have yet to see the U.S. data, and the Japanese data is yet to be fully collected. So as far as research conclusions go, I have none to share as of now.  But, since the Honors College has so generously granted me for two semesters, you will be hearing from me again soon in another blog with my research results! So, as for my future research plans, I will spend the rest of my time in Japan collecting and compiling my data, and when I return to the U.S., I will spend my final semester at the UofA analyzing the data, finishing my Honors Thesis, and (hopefully!) presenting my findings as a poster at a couple different conferences.

The research that Dr. Eidelman and I ultimately decided on is on a topic that he has previously researched thoroughly- a concept called “longevity bias.” Longevity bias essentially states that the longer something has existed, the more favorable people will perceive it. For example, in one of Dr. Eidelman’s previous studies, he had participants look at the same picture of a tree, but manipulated how old the tree was between participants (telling them it was either 500, 1500, or 4500 years old). They found that aesthetic judgments of the tree increased favorably with age, and the statistical analysis of this effect was significant (which is a big deal in the world of psychology!). Dr. Eidelman also has interest in Japan, as their culture is very socially unique, so we came up with the idea of testing if longevity bias has different results in American vs. Japanese college students. For the current study, Dr. Eidelman and I decided to show participants a painting that is by a relatively unknown artist and could be neutrally perceived.  We then copied the format of Dr. Eidelman’s previous study, where the subject is manipulated to either be old or new (in this case, 110 or 11 years old), and also whether the artist of the painting is American or Japanese. We show the picture of the painting to the participants and then ask them to fill out a brief questionnaire about their aesthetic perception of the painting.

We hypothesized that the effect shown in the previous study would be stronger in Japanese students than in American students. We have several reasons for believing so- mainly that Japanese culture places value on tradition and respecting the elderly more than American culture. Japan has had several thousand years to cultivate their society and beliefs, especially those that respect that which is old, and I can see that every day as I have been exploring the country and speaking the language. Japanese religions hold older shrines and temples in much higher regard than the newer ones, prohibiting the public to enter or even take pictures of sacred spaces that date back thousands of years. In Japanese, there are also several different honorifics, verbs, and nouns that change depending on the age of the person you are talking to- the older, the more polite.

We also considered another bias that would influence the resulting survey scores: ingroup bias. Japan is a collectivist society, which, in short, means that they place higher importance on community and value their collective identity (shared things like nationality, ethnic background, religion, etc.), rather than their individual identity.  People from collectivist countries often show more ingroup bias, or the belief that something/someone from their ingroup is better than their outgroup. In the case of our study, telling Japanese students that the painting they were being shown was painted by a Japanese artist would be catering to their ingroup, while saying it was done by an American artist would be their outgroup. Therefore, we hypothesized that along with higher longevity bias scores, Japanese students would also show higher ingroup bias scores when they were told that the painting was done by a Japanese artist.

To be completely honest, there is a lot about the world of psychology that I have yet to understand. Statistics are daunting, and the psychological lexicon is confusing at best, downright unintelligible at worst to me at times. However, Dr. Eidelman has been very patient with me, and I am really grateful for the work he has done and all of the SAPP research assistants that have helped a newbie like me with an ambitious project like this. Doing cross-cultural psychological research while I am also studying abroad and having half of my research materials be in a language that I am not fluent in yet has been a real challenge. Luckily, faculty and students at my exchange university in Japan, Dr. Hidefumi Hitokoto and his lab assistants from Kwansei Gakuin, have really helped me out with the translation process and are continuing to help me with data collection. And I would have never been able to even afford going to Japan if it weren’t for the Honors College Research Grant! This project has really been a group effort; I don’t feel like I should even be taking credit for any of it, and there’s still much work to be done on my part. But I will continue to do my best so that my research can hopefully help people have more interest in Japanese culture and share origins and understanding of societal beliefs that differ cross-culturally.