A recently published research by scientists in China and the U.K. has found that Chinese can be as proud and arrogant as other races even though Westerners have always perceived them as humble individuals, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported.
This holds true for other people from the East Asia region as well.
Earlier studies have suggested that western and eastern races exhibit varying images through their behavior. While East Asians usually describe themselves with negative things, Westerners have the tendency to have an inflated view of their capabilities.
In relation to this thinking, it is also said that people in the East are "more likely to place greater importance on group or collective values while [those in the West] emphasize individual attributes and freedoms," the article said.
Nonetheless, experts from Britain's University of Southampton and the Chinese Academy of Sciences remarked that these kinds of behavior may hide or mask a person's true emotions.
For the research, the team had to recruit a total of 40 volunteers: half from the U.S., Canada and Britain, and the rest from China.
During the study, scientists showed positive and negative words to the participants and asked which of those they mentioned can describe or be applied to them. While interviewing the volunteers, they also measured the neural electric signals found in the brain area called N170, which is used to direct one's awareness to immediate occurrences.
According to the research, the participants exhibited similar brain waves and reacted the same, whether it was a negative or positive word that was said to them, regardless of their cultures.
The study also found out that the people who took part in the tests considered positive traits as self-descriptive and negative ones as not applicable to themselves.
"Moreover, all participants responded faster to positive self-descriptive traits and to negative non-self-descriptive traits, indicating that the self-enhancement motive is equally potent across cultures," the scientists noted.
Meanwhile, the paper also highlighted that among Chinese participants, negative words brought a higher level of brain activity in N170, suggesting that such descriptions could more effectively grab the Eastern people's attention than Westerners.
The research, which appeared in the latest issue of the Oxford University-published journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, was led by Dr. Wu Lili of the Institute of Psychology at the Beijing-located Chinese Academy of Sciences.