Final answer:
The Hudson 1960 study found cultural differences in perceptual set related to environmental features, visual illusions, and attention to context. Cultural factors can significantly influence perception.
Step-by-step explanation:
The Hudson 1960 study found cultural differences in perceptual set. One such difference is related to the types of environmental features experienced by people in different cultural contexts. For example, people in Western cultures tend to have a perceptual context of buildings with straight lines, while people from certain non-Western cultures, like the Zulu of South Africa, have an uncarpentered view, where their villages are made up of round huts arranged in circles. This difference in environmental experiences affects their susceptibility to certain visual illusions, such as the Müller-Lyer illusion.
Another study by Masuda and Nisbett (2001) found that people from collectivistic cultures, like Japan, tend to focus on the context in which objects are presented, while people from individualistic cultures, like the United States, do not show the same attention to context. This suggests that cultural differences can influence the kinds of information people pay attention to when perceiving visual stimuli.
Additionally, our beliefs, values, prejudices, expectations, and life experiences can also affect our perceptions. Marshall Segall, Donald Campbell, and Melville Herskovits (1963) conducted a multinational study that demonstrated that individuals from Western cultures were more prone to experience certain visual illusions, like the Müller-Lyer illusion, compared to individuals from non-Western cultures. This shows that cultural factors can have a significant impact on perception.