Positive emotional regard towards the host culture mediates the way bicultural bilinguals detect emotional cues of facial expressions of happiness in a visual search task

Abstract We investigated the role of cultural experience in the search advantage for happy faces. European British participants living in the UK, Asian Japanese participants living in Japan, and Asian Japanese participants living in the UK, were required to search for a happy or an angry face target against a background of neutral facial expressions, using Asian Japanese and European American faces. Results showed that British participants displayed a search advantage favouring happy facial expressions, while Japanese participants living in Japan showed response time equivalence for happy and angry expressions. However, the Japanese participants residing in the UK showed a detection advantage favouring happy faces, thus resembling British participants. Correlational analyses revealed that it is positive emotional regard towards the host culture that underlies visual search performance rather than the length of exposure to the host culture per se. These results reveal how quality rather than quantity of inter-group contact modulates attentional mechanisms relating to out-group learning of facial expressions of emotion.