Abstract

Photographs of celebrities or objects of two incompatible cultural meaning systems were selected as experimental stimuli. By investigating bicultural individuals' naming of these photographs, and then their selection of a culture- associated beverage in the presence of a piece of background music, the present study found a profound switching between different cultural frames in response to the romantic music of China or USA. The findings suggest that the responses to the musical cue evoke more responses with strong cultural associations for a dominated culture than for a dominating culture.