Cultural differences in human figure drawings – a testimony from American and Japanese children's drawings.

La Voy, S. K., Pedersen, W. C., Reitz, J. M., Brauch, A. A., Luxenberg, T. M., & Nofsinger, C. C. (2001). Children's Drawings A Cross-Cultural Analysis from Japan and the United States. School Psychology International, 22(1), 53-63.‏

It's easy to see how cultural differences affect performance on verbal tests.  However, their influence on non-verbal tests is substantial as well.   The problem is that this influence is latent.  Any test performance is affected both by internal factors (personality, cognitive abilities) and by environmental factors (culture, education, experience and exposure to similar materials).  If we miss the cultural influences on the child's performance on nonverbal test, or if we underestimate the extent of their influence, we may wrongly interpret the child's products as resulting from his personality or his abilities to a larger extent than they really are.

The study described here is highly interesting, and written in a short, pleasant to read paper, which contains examples of children's drawings.  Unfortunately this paper is not open access.

Fifty two children aged seven to eight participated in the study.  The sample contained an equal number of American and Japanese boys and girls.  The children were asked to draw a house, a tree and a human figure.  They had five minutes to complete each drawing.

The authors measured three things in the human figure drawing:

A.    The existence of a smile.  A smile was determined if both corners of the mouth turned upward.

B.   The amount of detail in the drawing.  The authors counted the number of details that were nonessential for the identification of the drawing as a human figure (for instance, ears, fingers, fingernails, buttons, belts, shoes etc.).

C.   The drawing's size.  The drawing's height was measured from top to bottom.

Each drawing was evaluated by four persons. Drawings that did not

receive 100% interjudge agreement were not included in the final

analyses (the paper does not say how many such drawings there were).

A significant difference was found in the number of smiles that were drawn by American and Japanese children.  Twenty American children drew a smile while only five Japanese children did so.  The authors argue that every culture imposes limits on the public expression of feelings, each to a varying degree.   The Japanese probably appreciate the restraint of feelings in public.  Americans are probably less restrained in emotional expression in public.  As for the smile, the American culture places a higher social value on the smile than the Japanese culture.

There was a significant difference in the number of details drawn by the American and Japanese children.  Japanese children drew more details than American children.  The authors argue that Japanese children are educated to pay a lot of attention to details.  They appreciate order, perseverance and concentration, and are educated to prefer process over product.

There was a significant difference in the height of the drawings – between genders and between cultures.  Girls of both cultures drew higher human figures than boys.  Japanese children drew higher human figures than American children.  The authors argue that a drawing's height represents  how the child views his or her worth within the society.  Children are highly appreciated in the Japanese culture.  The child is in the center of the Japanese family.  Parents try to give their child the feeling that he is loved and wanted.  Japanese children live in a society that is more collective and less individualistic than American children.  A Japanese child feels that he is part of a larger self, part of a highly appreciated group in the Japanese culture.

I must say that this explanation doesn't sound convincing to me.   I perceive the American culture as child centered too.   I think that individualism may also lead to higher human figure drawings.

 The authors suggest that a possible explanation for the larger drawings by the females might be the greater group or social orientation of girls this age.  Young girls "are more attuned to the group" and their self value rises out of identification with and a sense of belonging to the group.  I must say this argument didn't convince me either.

There was no difference between Americans and Japanese in the height of the tree and the house drawings.  Differences in height were found only in the human figure drawings.  It's interesting to think about the reason for that, especially in light of our tendency to interpret the tree as reflecting aspects of the self, and the house as reflecting aspects of the self and of the family and the self within the family.

Anyway, children's drawings probably represent the child's perception of himself and the culture, and the himself within the cultural context.  Children draw things that are accepted in their culture and represent cultural values in their drawings.  For example, religious Jewish children tend to draw human figures wearing traditional cloths (for instance, girls and women wearing long skirts).  When we ask a child to draw a dynamic family drawing (in which each person is doing something) we expect to get drawings of activities that are accepted in the culture to which the child belongs.

This paper stresses the importance of taking the child's cultural values into consideration when we interpret his human figure drawings and his drawings in general.

I think this conclusion can be generalized to all of the child's products during the assessment.