Lee – cultural norms and early socialization

In Chinese culture when you interact with each other, you’re not supposed to look in to people’s eyes.  But in North American culture, you have to do that otherwise you be considered impolite and et cetera but in China, it’s the other way around.  So what we have found is, at about three or six months of age, babies are not that different when they’re looking at their own race and other race faces.  So they’re typically looking at the eyes because eyes are very, very attractive to all the babies all over the world.  But by about 10 months of age, Chinese babies start to avoid looking at own race, Chinese people’s eyes.  They start looking at the nose and Caucasian babies continue to look at the eyes.  And then with age that doesn’t change.  So Chinese individuals, children, pre-school children, school-age children, adults, they’ll be looking at the nose of the own race face but when we show them other race faces such as Caucasian faces, they are not afraid, they look at the eyes.  So our culture actually shapes the way you look for, where you look in the face to make sure you comply with the norms of your society.  And the surprising part is it starts that early, you know, about nine months of age they already learned about how to do it in a Chinese way, I’m talking about the Chinese babies.  I’m sure the Caucasian babies in North America or most of the babies in North America probably are learning the norms of our society here and then they will be paying more attention to the eyes than the nose.