Comparing explicit and implicit disgust associated with cultural mixing in Singapore

• Main Author: Lee, Xue Er
• Other Authors: Bobby K. Cheon
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Psychology::Applied psychology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/70264
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The rapid growth of foreigners in Singapore has urged us to understand the reactions towards cultural mixing among Singaporeans. Cultural mixing in which cultural elements from own and foreign cultures forms a new entity is known as ‘cultural fusion’ (Hao et al., 2016). Cultural fusion could be deemed as a form of contamination, invoking disgust as people attempts to defend their local culture from foreign contamination (Cheon et al., 2016). In this study, we investigated explicit and implicit disgust of Singaporeans towards culturally fused images of symbolic Singapore and China icons. Measuring implicit disgust using the implicit association test (IAT) identifies automatic disgust associated with cultural contamination, while explicit self-reports identifies deliberate disgust. As participants might control their responses in explicit self-reports, IAT would be useful in understanding true, underlying attitudes. It is predicted that Singaporeans would associate contamination with fused images faster than purity in IAT, and would rate fused images more disgusting than pure images. From the results, IAT did not yield significant findings, but disgust ratings were significantly higher for fused images than pure images. Individual differences including those with unfavourable feelings towards China revealed significant positive correlation with disgust ratings of fused images. Additionally, those with high need for closure and disgust sensitivity were non-significantly associated with higher IAT scores and disgust ratings towards fused images. This study on Singaporeans extends from Cheon et al. (2016) study on Americans could potentially suggest that disgust towards cultural contamination have a cross-cultural adaptive value in preserving in-group identity.