Culture and the brain: Opportunities and obstacles

Influence of peers' actual appraisals on moral self-representations of Chinese adolescents

Adolescence is a vital period of developing a moral self. As individuals enter adolescence, peers become increasingly important to them. This study aimed to explore the influence of peers' actual appraisals on moral self-representations. Based on Looking Glass Self Hypothesis, peers' reflected appraisals usually have a mediating effect on peers' actual appraisals and self-appraisals. This study used the Chinese Moral Trait Words Rating Scale to investigate 160 dyads of Chinese adolescents (12–14 years old). The participants filled in the Self-Appraisals Questionnaire, Peers' Reflected Appraisals Questionnaire, and Peers' Actual Appraisals Questionnaire, respectively. The results showed that: (a) peers' actual appraisals indirectly affected self-appraisals through peers' reflected appraisals in the process of forming the moral self of early Chinese adolescents; (b) Chinese adolescents had a certain accuracy in peers' actual appraisals, but often underestimated their peers' actual appraisals of them. This study was conducive to understanding the influence of peers on forming adolescents' moral self in the context of collectivistic culture.

The Influence of Actual Appraisals of Peers on the Self-Appraisals of Personality Traits for Chinese Late Adolescents: The Mediating Effect of Reflected Appraisals

Reflected appraisals refer to the perceptions of individuals of how they are perceived by others. Numerous studies in cultural psychology have revealed that individuals in the Eastern collectivist culture show an interdependent self-construal, which depends much on the social culture. Hence, the research on reflected appraisals in the Eastern culture can improve the understanding of how the social environment shapes the self-perception of an individual. In this study, we aimed to explore the relationships among self-appraisals, reflected appraisals, and actual appraisals of peers of the Big Five personality for Chinese late adolescents. Participants were divided into 16 groups, with two to four people of each group who were familiar with each other. Each participant was told to fill out the questionnaires of reflected appraisals, actual appraisals of peers, and self-appraisals. Through analyzing 164 sets of data, the results showed the following: (a) The scores of reflected appraisals are significantly lower than that of the actual appraisals of peers. (b) The relationships among the reflected appraisals, actual appraisals of peers, and self-appraisals are distinct on different personalities. For extroversion, there are significant medium- to high-degree relationships among the three types of appraisals; while for the agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness, self-appraisals are highly correlated with reflected appraisals, and reflected appraisals show a low-degree correlation with the actual appraisals of peers. (c) Reflected appraisals play a mediating role between actual appraisals of peers and self-appraisals. Our study suggests that individuals in Chinese culture generally underestimate how their peers perceive them. Furthermore, actual appraisals of peers affect the self-concepts of individuals through reflected appraisals. This study revealed the unique personality feature of self-modesty under the background of Chinese culture and the importance of peers on the development of self-concepts for Chinese late adolescents. This study can shed new light on the understanding of the development of self-concepts for late adolescents under different cultural backgrounds.

Neuroscientific perspectives for a theory of trauma: a critical review of integrative models of biology and culture

In the last 25 years of the 20th century, psychopathology coded a diverse range of social phenomena under the heading of trauma, featuring the study of psychological trauma as an autonomous area progressively informed by cultural and neurobiological research. In this scenario, we witnessed the emergence of the biocultural paradigm, an epistemological perspective that seeks to elucidate the interactive trajectories by which culture and biology consolidate each other´s effects. This article will address the intersections between the field of psychological trauma and neurosciences, based on the analytical dimensions of expansion of the category of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the epistemological premises of neurobehavioral studies of stress and fear, and the limitations of the bidirectionality hypothesis advanced by contemporary cultural neurosciences. The elaboration of definitively integrative approaches can assist the development of comprehensive models capable of conceiving knowledges and practices at the level of human experience, avoiding reductionist interpretations that submit complex cultural and subjective experiences alternatingly to the imperatives of the brain and to semiologic codes of pathogenic reasoning.

Traces of culture: The feedback loop between behavior, brain, and disorder

Culture is part of an extensive series of feedback loops, which involve multiple organismic levels including social contexts, cognitive mediations, neural processes, and behavior. Recent studies in neuroscience show that culturally contingent social processes shape some neural pathways. Studying the influence of cultural context on neural processes may yield new insights into psychiatric disorders. New methodologies in the neurosciences offer innovative ways to assess the impact of culture on mental health and illness. However, implementing these methodologies raises important theoretical and ethical concerns, which must be resolved to address patient individuality and the complexity of cultural diversity. This article discusses cultural context as a major influence on (and consequence of) human neural plasticity and advocates a culture-brain-behavior (CBB) interaction model for conceptualizing the relationship between culture, brain, and psychiatric disorders. Recommendations are made for integrating neuroscientific techniques into transcultural psychiatric research by taking a systems approach to evaluating disorders.

Culture: by the brain and in the brain?

Since the 1990s, several disciplines have emerged at the interface between neuroscience and the social and human sciences. For the most part, they aim at capturing the commonalities that underlay the heterogeneity of human behaviors and experiences. Neuroanthropology and cultural neuroscience, or the "neurodisciplines of culture," appear different, since their goal is to understand specificity rather than commonality and to address how cultural differences are inscribed in the brain. After offering an overview of these disciplines, and of their relation to endeavors such as cultural psychology and social neuroscience, this article discusses some of the most representative studies in the area in order to explore in which ways they are relevant for an understanding of culture.

The negative attribution processes of mothers of children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder

The objective of this study was to investigate the attribution processes of mothers regarding children's prosocial behaviors, inattention, and hyperactivity/impulsivity (symptoms of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, ADHD) using two paradigms. The first paradigm involved multidimensional attributions. The second paradigm concerned making attributions of children's identical behaviors based on information such as consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency. The participants were 64 mothers of children with ADHD (7-13 years old) and 64 mothers with typical/normal children (7-12 years old). The results showed that mothers of typical children exhibited positive attribution styles or person attributions whereas mothers of children with ADHD exhibited negative attribution styles. Mothers of children with ADHD tended to make personal attributions of children's negative behaviors (e.g., inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity; HI) but made situational attributions of prosocial behaviors. The results of this study can be used in future studies of the effects of intervention on children with ADHD or in studies related to neurophysiology.

Positive Emotion Regulation and Psychopathology: A Transdiagnostic Cultural Neuroscience Approach

There is burgeoning interest in the study of positive emotion regulation and psychopathology. Given the significant public health costs and the tremendous variance in national prevalence rates associated with many disorders of positive emotion, it is critical to reach an understanding of how cultural factors, along with biological factors, mutually influence positive emotion regulation. Progress in this domain has been relatively unexplored, however, underscoring the need for an integrative review and empirical roadmap for investigating the cultural neuroscientific contributions to positive emotion disturbance for both affective and clinical science domains. The present paper thus provides a multidisciplinary, cultural neuroscience approach to better understand positive emotion regulation and psychopathology. We conclude with a future roadmap for researchers aimed at harnessing positive emotion and alleviating the burden of mental illness cross-culturally.

Culture, mind, and the brain: current evidence and future directions

Current research on culture focuses on independence and interdependence and documents numerous East-West psychological differences, with an increasing emphasis placed on cognitive mediating mechanisms. Lost in this literature is a time-honored idea of culture as a collective process composed of cross-generationally transmitted values and associated behavioral patterns (i.e., practices). A new model of neuro-culture interaction proposed here addresses this conceptual gap by hypothesizing that the brain serves as a crucial site that accumulates effects of cultural experience, insofar as neural connectivity is likely modified through sustained engagement in cultural practices. Thus, culture is "embrained," and moreover, this process requires no cognitive mediation. The model is supported in a review of empirical evidence regarding (a) collective-level factors involved in both production and adoption of cultural values and practices and (b) neural changes that result from engagement in cultural practices. Future directions of research on culture, mind, and the brain are discussed.

Cultural Neuroscience

Cultural neuroscience issues from the apparently incompatible combination of neuroscience and cultural psychology. A brief literature sampling suggests, instead, several preliminary topics that demonstrate proof of possibilities: cultural differences in both lower-level processes (e.g. perception, number representation) and higher-order processes (e.g. inferring others' emotions, contemplating the self) are beginning to shed new light on both culture and cognition. Candidates for future cultural neuroscience research include cultural variations in the default (resting) network, which may be social; regulation and inhibition of feelings, thoughts, and actions; prejudice and dehumanization; and neural signatures of fundamental warmth and competence judgments.