When it comes to emotions, Eastern and Western cultures see things very differently

Across two studies, participants viewed images, each of which consisted of one centre model and four background models in each image. The researchers manipulated the facial emotion happy, angry, sad in the centre or background models and asked the participants to determine the dominant emotion of the centre figure.

The majority of Japanese participants 72% reported that their judgments of the centre person’s emotions were influenced by the emotions of the background figures, while most North Americans also 72% reported they were not influenced by the background figures at all.

“What we found is quite interesting,” says Takahiko Masuda, a Psychology professor from the University of Alberta. “Our results demonstrate that when North Americans are trying to figure out how a person is feeling, they selectively focus on that particular person’s facial expression, whereas Japanese consider the emotions of the other people in the situation.”

This may be because Japanese attention is not concentrated on the individual, but includes everyone in the group, says Masuda.

Robots see you all like meatsacks. Pirates see you all as marks. Ninja -> Targets.

It’s a fairly simple calculation.