Abstract
Abstract:Despite diverse contents, the essence of social cognition lies in the human understanding of self, other and their interrelation. As a unique social phenomenon, culture has extensive influence on social cognition, which is focally manifested by the influence of culture on brain processing of "self" and "other" information. Research in culture neuroscience showed a significant influence of culture on self-related processes such as self-relevant memory and self representation, which probably stems from different styles of self-construal in different cultures. In the cortical level, these differences are mainly manifested by different functional changes in medial prefrontal cortices during self-relevant processing in different cultures. In parallel with these evidence, culture also has an important influence on brain processing of “other” information, particularly other people' emotional states, which is mainly embodied by the culture advantage effect in identifying facial expressions and by the culture differences in empathetic processes. This is most evident in culturally modulating effect in amygdala activation. Future studies of cultural neuroscience, may attach more importance to studying neural mechanisms underlying the impact of culture, sub-culture, and religious culture on diverse forms of social cognition (empathetic processes, social comparison, and joint social action), and on the interaction between self relevant processing and emotional relevant processing.
Keywords: Self construal, Cultural Neuroscience, Empathy, Self representation, Emotional processing
Key words
Self construal /
Culture /
Empathy /
Self representation /
Neural mechanisms
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Understanding the impact of culture on social brain function: The perspective of individual relationship[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2013, 36(4): 1014-1022
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