For example, when reading the expression on a person's face, while Americans home in on the expression of a central figure, Japanese take in expressions on the faces of other people behind that central figure to gauge that person's emotional state.
To see if culture shapes how we recognize faces, scientists investigated the eye movements of 14 Western Caucasian and 14 East Asian observers as they looked at faces on a computer screen. Head-mounted eye-tracking systems used miniature cameras to monitor eye movements.
"We noticed a striking difference in eye movements in Westerners and East Asian observers," said researcher Roberto Caldara, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. "We found that Westerners tend to look at specific features on an individual's face such as the eyes and mouth whereas East Asian observers tend to focus on the nose or the centre of the face which allows a more general view of all the features."
These differences are not due to genetics, "but to genuine social experience, as strategies from British-born Chinese are rather Western-like," Caldara told LiveScience.
http://www.livescience.com/culture/080819-face-culture.html
