Differences in face touching by Japanese and British people

The face touching behavior of Japanese and British subjects was compared under three different conditions, viz. listening to a lecture, listening to music and without a specially assigned task. The results showed that (1) British people did more frequent face touching than Japanese people and left hand usage was more prominent, while the Japanese did not show a hand difference in either the lecture listening or the no-task condition, (2) the duration of face touching did not differ between Japanese and British and (3) British people touched their chin and mouth frequently while Japanese touched their nose and eyes frequently. From these results the hypothesis of cross-cultural difference of cerebral functioning between the Japanese and the British was examined.