Global or local processing: relationship between multicultural experiences and information processing of minority group members

This study explores whether minority group members with multicultural experiences tend to process information locally. To Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, some Chinese Uyghur college students were exposed to multicultural priming (Han-Uyghur culture) and some to mono-cultural priming (Uyghur culture only). The results of the experiment indicated that the multicultural priming group responded more quickly to local letters than mono-cultural priming group (Experiment 1) and were inclined to find out differences between objects (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 excluded the possibility that the results of experiments 1 and 2 were caused by the minority group’s inherent tendency to process information locally. These findings indicate that minority group members with multicultural experiences tend to process information locally.