Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
We subsequently analyzed the influence of these factors in terms of variations in
culture and social relationships. We thus initially collected data on posture from an
international German-Japanese project referred to as CUBE-G. Details of the data
from the CUBE-G project are provided in [12].
4.1 Analysis of Corpus Data in Relation to Cultures
In this section, we analyzed the characteristics of posture studying CUBE-G data
based on two cultures: German and Japanese. We annotated the head, leg and arm
posture using Bull's coding scheme [15] in relation to first time conversations
involving eight German and nine Japanese cases. For the head posture, we took 6
categories, for arm posture we took 16 categories and for leg posture we took 4
categories of posture shapes/types from Bull's coding scheme [15].
As cultural differences were only found for the arm postures, and not for the leg
and head postures, these were therefore examined. Table 1 sets out the arm posture
changes that were extracted from studying the data of German and Japanese cultures
involving first time interactions. The values for “Frequency,” “Duration,” and
“Mirroring,” were derived by calculating the average number of posture shifts
observed in the main data of the present study. In order to specify the value for
“Spatial extent” and “Rigidness” we took the frequently occurring arm postures.
Details as to how we formulated the value of each of the posture traits in relation to
culture is provided in [1], [17].
Table 1.
Posture characteristics affected by cultural variation
Table 1 indicates that the Japanese tend to engage in less frequent postures, remain
in the same posture longer, engage in more frequent mirroring, take up less space, and
display a more rigid posture in comparison to Germans, which represents findings
which have been supported by previous studies. Sanchez-Burks [8
], for example,
has
pointed out that members of cultural groups that are collectivistic in nature tend to
display more behavioral mirroring than those from cultural groups that are more
individualistic. The findings from the present study therefore support the notion that a
collectivistic culture (Japanese) displays a higher incidence of mirroring than in an
individualistic culture (German).
4.2 Analysis of Corpus Data in Relation to Social Relationships
Following the above procedure, we then studied the main data from the CUBE-G
project in relation to two different social relationships namely, a first time encounter
and an interaction with someone of a higher status. Details from the main analysis for
two different social relationships are given in [17]. The way in which posture is
affected by variation in social relationships is indicated in Table 2.
