No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Nature, Nurture, and Their Interplay: A Review of Cultural Neuroscience
Abstract
Cultural neuroscience research examines how psychological processes are affected by the interplay between culture and biological factors, including genetic influences, patterns of neural activation, and physiological processes. In this review, we present foundational and current empirical research in this area, and we also discuss theories that aim to explain how various aspects of the social environment are interpreted as meaningful in different cultures and interact with a cascade of biological processes to ultimately influence thoughts and behaviors. This review highlights theoretical and methodological issues, potential solutions, and future implications for a field that aspires to integrate the complexities of human biology with the richness of culture.
... The thinking patterns and behavioral habits formed under the long-term influence of Confucian culture may create specific neural pathways and neural regulatory patterns in the brain, which in turn influence the stress-related neuroendocrine system [30]. When individuals follow the calm mindset and rational coping methods advocated by Confucian culture, regions such as the prefrontal cortex of the brain may play a stronger regulatory role, suppressing the excessive responses of brain regions like the amygdala to stressors, thereby reducing the excessive secretion of stress hormones such as cortisol. ...
... The influence of Confucian culture on stress responses is long-term and continuous. After experiencing similar stressful decision-making situations for multiple times, individuals will gradually form stable decision-making habits [30]. As Confucian culture prompts individuals to frequently trigger stress responses in financial decision-making and guides them to make conservative and risk-averse decisions, over time, this decision-making pattern will be strengthened into a habitual behavior and be passed down among family generations. ...
In the context of household financial decisions, the biomechanical mechanism mainly refers to a series of principles in which the internal physiological processes of the body are interrelated with psychological cognition and influence the decision-making results when individuals make financial decisions. From the perspective of neurobiology, Confucian culture can influence the allocation behavior of household financial assets through the neural mechanisms in multiple regions of the brain, mainly including the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and cingulate gyrus. From the perspective of the neuroendocrine system, the secretion levels of stress hormones such as cortisol are also closely related to household financial decisions. Stress responses, by influencing psychological cognition and neural mechanisms, have become one of the important biomechanical factors affecting financial decision-making behaviors. Confucian culture has profoundly influenced individuals’ choices in the allocation of household financial assets by affecting the triggering and cognitive assessment of stress responses, the neuroendocrine regulation related to stress responses, and exerting long-term impacts and intergenerational inheritance on stress responses, resulting in characteristics such as high savings and low participation in risky assets in the allocation of household financial assets. To verify the impact of Confucian culture on the allocation of household financial assets, this study constructs the Confucian culture variable by using the iterative principal factor method, constructs Probit and Tobit models, and conducts empirical analysis using the China Household Finance Survey data (CHFS). The study finds that Confucian culture can significantly promote savings, suppress the breadth and depth of households’ participation in the financial market, and lead to a more simplified allocation of financial assets. Heterogeneity analysis shows that its impact on elderly and low-income households is more significant. This study provides insights into the cultural and biological roots behind household financial asset allocation, offering new perspectives to explain how Confucian culture shapes financial behavior through biomechanical pathways. Future research can utilize neuroscience and genetic technologies to analyze the micro-genetic, neural regulation, and molecular connections between culture and biology in the influence of Confucian culture on financial decisions from the dimensions such as the integration of molecular genetics and cultural neuroscience, the exploration of gene-culture co-evolution, and the construction of gene expression network models, so as to contribute to the research in cultural economics.
... In other words, personality is attributable to both nurture (culture/socioecology) and nature (genes). We argue that the key question is not whether personality is influenced more by nature or by nurture, but how personality is shaped by the interaction between nature and nurture (Sasaki & Kim 2017). As illustrated by the dashed arrows in Figure 1, our framework highlights the interactive effects of genes and culture/socioecology on personality (see Section 7). ...
... Rather than asking whether personality is influenced www.annualreviews.org • Culture and Personality Genotype: the genetic constitution of an organism more by nature (genes) or by nurture (culture/socioecology), it is essential to ask how personality is shaped by the interaction between nature and nurture (Sasaki & Kim 2017). ...
Culture and personality are two central topics in psychology. Individuals are culturally influenced influencers of culture, yet the research linking culture and personality has been limited and fragmentary. We integrate the literatures on culture and personality with recent advances in socioecology and genetics to formulate the Socioecological-Genetic Framework of Culture and Personality. Our framework not only delineates the mutual constitution of culture and personality but also sheds light on (a) the roots of culture and personality, (b) how socioecological changes partly explain temporal trends in culture and personality, and (c) how genes and culture/socioecology interact to influence personality (i.e., nature × nurture interactions). By spotlighting the roles of socioecology and genetics, our integrative framework advances the understanding of culture and personality.
... Mainly, rs237885 TT carriers with a history of childhood abuse had a higher risk of aggression [31]. The specific role of OXTR gene polymorphisms in emotional support seeking, related to social norms and culturally normative behavior, has been discussed in several studies [32][33][34][35][36][37], with OXTR rs53576 being one of the main focuses of attention. OXTR rs53576 has been related to attachment security and marital satisfaction, and GG carriers rated higher compared A carriers [38]. ...
... Individuals carrying the G allele of the OXTR rs53576 appeared to be more sensitive to the cultural environment [37]. The general conclusion might be that certain people regulate emotions according to cultural norms because they are biologically susceptible to be sensitive to the socio-emotional cues in a culture [36]. However, the only previous cross-sectional study, analyzing the association between rs53576 and a wide variety of emotional traits and states in a sample of young adults of various ethnicities (European, Asian, Maori/Pacific Islander, others), did not find any significant associations [40]. ...
Background:
The specific role of the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene polymorphisms in emotional support seeking, related to social norms and culturally normative behavior, has been discussed in several studies. Evidence on the association between aggression and OXTR polymorphisms has also been reported. The goal of the current study was to analyze the effect of the OXTR rs53576 polymorphism, prenatal testosterone effect (second-to-fourth digit ratio, or 2D:4D), and culture on aggression assessed with the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ).
Methods:
The data were collected in Russia and Tanzania and included seven ethnic groups of European, Asian, and African origin. The total sample included 1705 adults (837 males, 868 females). All the subjects were evaluated with the BPAQ. As a measure of prenatal androgenization, the second and fourth digits were measured directly from hand, and the digit ratios were calculated. All the participants provided buccal samples, from which genomic DNA was extracted, and the OXTR gene rs53576 polymorphism was genotyped. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS version 23.0; the alpha level for all analyses was set at 0.05.
Results:
The ethnic group factor was the most significant predictor of ratings on BPAQ (medium effect size for physical aggression, anger and hostility scales, and low for verbal aggression). To study the effect of sex, the OXTR polymorphism, and prenatal androgenization, we conducted the z-score transformation for BPAQ scales and 2D:4D for each ethnic group and pooled these data into new z-score variables. According to the GLM analysis after leveling the effects of culture (z-transformation), all four scales of BPAQ demonstrated association with sex (main effects), with men scoring higher on physical and verbal aggression and women scoring higher on anger and hostility. Anger and hostility scales were also associated with OXTR polymorphism and 2D:4D of the right hand. The lowest levels of anger and hostility were observed in individuals with the AA genotype, especially in men.
Conclusions:
Our data suggest that both oxytocin (OXTR gene polymorphism) and fetal testosterone (2D:4D) may significantly affect emotional (anger) and cognitive (hostility) aggression in humans, given the leveling the role of culture.
... Additionally, given the idea of gene-culture interaction whereby one's psychological tendency may emerge as a result of an interaction between genetic and environmental factors, including culturally specific norms and practices (Kim & Sasaki, 2014;Sasaki & Kim, 2017), future researchers can address whether and to what extent gene and culture interact to influence a set of psychological tendencies such as the symptoms of psychological distress, the perception of stressful situations, and the appropriate form of social support. For example, Kim et al. (2010) examined a possibility that whether people internalize culturally normative behaviors would be subject to genetic influence. ...
In this chapter, we describe the theoretical framework of cultural psychological research on self, attentional styles, interpersonal relationships, and emotional expressivity and highlight findings on cultural differences on the symptoms of psychological distress, the perception of stressful situations, and the appropriate form of social support. The previous findings suggest that East Asians are more likely than Westerners to emphasize somatic experience and perceive interpersonal situations (e.g., interpersonal friction) as more stressful. Moreover, East Asians are less likely than Westerners to seek social support when they need help to cope with difficult situations, based on concern over disrupting social networks, which is a negative outcome of interdependent orientation for maintaining harmonious relationships. Finally, we discuss implications for future research in terms of the necessity of further investigations within Asian cultures to generalize the findings and cross-cultural examinations of genetic variants’ potential effects on socioemotional tendencies with sufficient sample sizes.
... A holistic perspective values components as parts of a whole and the representation of objects intimately associated with their context, while an analytic perspective values constancy of attributes regardless of context and the gaining of knowledge by breaking and categorising whole concepts down into their smaller components [5][6][7]. East Asian cultures tend to value a holistic approach, while Western European cultures tend to value an analytic approach [8][9][10][11], reflecting broad differences between these two cultural groups in terms of underlying biological and psychological processes [12]. ...
Cross-cultural research has elucidated many important differences between people from Western European and East Asian cultural backgrounds regarding how each group encodes and consolidates the contents of complex visual stimuli. While Western European groups typically demonstrate a perceptual bias towards centralised information, East Asian groups favour a perceptual bias towards background information. However, this research has largely focused on the perception of neutral cues and thus questions remain regarding cultural group differences in both the perception and recognition of negative, emotionally significant cues. The present study therefore compared Western European (n = 42) and East Asian (n = 40) participants on a free-viewing task and a subsequent memory task utilising negative and neutral social cues. Attentional deployment to the centralised versus background components of negative and neutral social cues was indexed via eye-tracking, and memory was assessed with a cued-recognition task two days later. While both groups demonstrated an attentional bias towards the centralised components of the neutral cues, only the Western European group demonstrated this bias in the case of the negative cues. There were no significant differences observed between Western European and East Asian groups in terms of memory accuracy, although the Western European group was unexpectedly less sensitive to the centralised components of the negative cues. These findings suggest that culture modulates low-level attentional deployment to negative information, however not higher-level recognition after a temporal interval. This paper is, to our knowledge, the first to concurrently consider the effect of culture on both attentional outcomes and memory for both negative and neutral cues.
... Cultural determinism: Neuroscientific studies using fMRI suggest that cultural preferences may be deeply ingrained in structural differences between the brains of people who grew up in different cultures (Sasaki & Kim, 2017). This suggests some level of cultural determinism. ...
SUMMARY
We offer a theoretical framework based on the paradox theory of leadership to unpack and extend leader cultural intelligence (LCQ). Leaders need to be able make swift transitions between culturally diverse others on a daily basis, as they are confronted with diversity in colleagues, clients and stakeholders. This implies that they have to be able to adapt their leadership behaviors in function of the cultural context of the person and the situation, in order to be influential as a leader. We propose LCQ as an antecedent of (switching between) paradoxical leadership behaviors (PLB). We propose that LCQ consists of three elements, (1) LCQ/IC (integral complexity), (2) LCQ/BR (behavioral repertoire), and (3) LCQ/SR (meta-cognitive and emotional self-regulation), and functions as an antecedent of PLBs, which in turn predict intercultural leadership effectiveness.
Keywords: cultural intelligence, leadership, behavior, self-regulation, culture, paradox
... The emerging field of cultural neuroscience is changing our understanding of the brain. As a field, it draws from anthropology, cultural psychology, neuroscience and population genetics; its research focuses on interactions between culture and biology, including how neural processes are affected by cultural traits and relations (Chiao, 2010;Han, 2017;Sasaki and Kim, 2017;Pedraza, 2020). The field of cultural neuroscience takes into account how cultural variation across the globe might influence not only how people think and act, but also how this influences brain functioning. ...
... e emerging eld of cultural neuroscience is changing our understanding of the brain. As a eld, it draws from anthropology, cultural psychology, neuroscience and population genetics; its research focuses on interactions between culture and biology, including how neural processes are a ected by cultural traits and relations (Chiao, 2010;Han, 2017;Sasaki and Kim, 2017;Pedraza, 2020). e eld of cultural neuroscience takes into account how cultural variation across the globe might in uence not only how people think and act, but also how this in uences brain functioning. ...
The overall goal of the ISEE Assessment is to pool multi-disciplinary expertise on educational systems and reforms from a range of stakeholders in an open and inclusive manner, and to undertake a scientifically robust and evidence based assessment that can inform education policy-making at all levels and on all scales. Its aim is not to be policy prescriptive but to provide policy relevant information and recommendations to improve education systems and the way we organize learning in formal and non-formal settings. It is also meant to identify information gaps and priorities for future research in the field of education.
... The emerging field of cultural neuroscience is changing our understanding of the brain. As a field, it draws from anthropology, cultural psychology, neuroscience and population genetics; its research focuses on interactions between culture and biology, including how neural processes are affected by cultural traits and relations (Chiao, 2010;Han, 2017;Sasaki and Kim, 2017;Pedraza, 2020). The field of cultural neuroscience takes into account how cultural variation across the globe might influence not only how people think and act, but also how this influences brain functioning. ...
The overall goal of the ISEE Assessment is to pool multi-disciplinary expertise on educational systems and reforms from a range of stakeholders in an open and inclusive manner, and to undertake a scientifically robust and evidence based assessment that can inform education policy-making at all levels and on all scales. Its aim is not to be policy prescriptive but to provide policy relevant information and recommendations to improve education systems and the way we organize learning in formal and non-formal settings. It is also meant to identify information gaps and priorities for future research in the field of education.
... Up to now, researchers have made several attempts to explain the possible mechanisms of genetic influences on individuals' moral performance (e.g. Gard, Dotterer, & Hyde, 2019;Knafo-Noam, Vertsberger, & Israel, 2018;Raine, 2008;Sasaki & Kim, 2016). Based on previous findings, we propose the "gene-hormone-brain-psychology-behavior" model to explain the pathways from genetic variation to moral performance (see Figure 1). ...
Exploring the genetic foundation of morality can help people further understand the evolution and development of human morality. This paper reviews the genetic contribution to moral performance of East Asians and compares the genetic effects between East Asians and Westerners. Genes related to the oxytocin (OXTR, CD38), dopamine (COMT, DRD3, DRD4), serotonin (TPH2), testosterone (AR), and arginine vasopressin (AVPR1B) systems are all involved in moral judgment and moral behaviors. Most of these genes are found to show similar effects on moral performance of East Asians and Westerners. We propose the “gene-hormone-brain-psychology- behavior” model to explain the pathways from genetic variation to moral performance. In the end, we discuss future directions of genetic research on morality from four perspectives.
... orientations on multiple scales and showed that cultural differences in independent versus interdependent orientation were more pronounced in those carrying either 2R or 7R alleles of DRD4 polymorphism than those having neither the 2R nor 7R allele (the cultural differences in independent vs. interdependent orientation disappeared in those having neither the 2R nor 7R allele). The findings of Kitayama et al. (2014) are in line with both the concept of gene-environment interaction, which holds that individuals' susceptibility to the environment is moderated by genetic variation (Belsky et al., 2007(Belsky et al., , 2009Obradović & Boyce, 2009;Way & Taylor, 2010), and that of gene-culture interaction, which expands on the gene-environment interaction framework to include cultural norms and practices as components of the environment (Kim & Sasaki, 2014;Sasaki & Kim, 2017). In this context, individuals who carry the 7R and 2R alleles of DRD4 polymorphism are more environmentally susceptible than noncarriers (Bakermans-Kranenburg & van IJzendoorn, 2006;Sasaki et al., 2013). ...
The dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4) is associated with novelty-seeking and risk-taking behaviors that have had an adaptive value in the history of human migration. It also plays a role in moderating the extent to which people adhere to cultural norms and practices. The aim of this study was to replicate previous findings about how DRD4 polymorphism interacts with cultural differences in social orientation, which revealed Westerners’ emphasis on independence and East Asians’ emphasis on interdependence. Testing Japanese and European Canadian undergraduates (n = 784), we succeeded in replicating these previous findings: the Canadian students were more independent, whereas the Japanese students were more interdependent. However, none of the interaction effects between culture and DRD4 were significant. Implications for candidate gene research investigating gene–environment and gene–culture interactions are discussed.
... Research in cultural neuroscience has revealed that cultural behaviors or values are closely associated with neural activities Rule et al., 2013;Sasaki & Kim, 2017). Engaging in tasks related to a culture repeatedly will create culturally patterned neural activities and will be reflected by the anatomical or functional characteristics of the brain (Kitayama & Tompson, 2010;Kitayama & Uskul, 2011). ...
Although research in the field of cultural psychology and cultural neuroscience has revealed that culture is an important factor related to the human behaviors and neural activities in various tasks, it remains unclear how different brain regions organize together to construct a topological network for the representation of individual’s cultural tendency. In this study, we examined the hypothesis that resting-state brain network properties can reflect individual’s cultural background or tendency. By combining the methods of resting state MRI and graph theoretical analysis, significant cultural differences between participants from Eastern and Western cultures were found in the degree and global efficiency of regions mainly within the default mode network and subcortical network. Furthermore, the holistic/analytic thinking style, as a cultural value, provided a partial explanation for the cultural differences on various nodal metrics. Validation analyses further confirmed that these network properties effectively predicted the tendency of holistic/analytic cultural style within a group (r = 0.23), and accurately classified cultural groups (65%). The current study establishes a neural connectome representation of holistic/analytic cultural style including the topological brain network properties of regions in the default mode network, the basal ganglia and amygdala, which enable accurate cultural group membership classification.
... It is worth noting that susceptibility to different kinds of threat may differ depending on people's motivations (Sasaki & Kim, 2017). For example, physical violence should be especially threatening to those who are physically vulnerable and thus motivated to protect themselves, and social threats should be especially concerning to those who are motivated to affiliate. ...
Cultural neuroscience research has provided substantial evidence that culture shapes the brain by providing systematically different sets of experiences. However, cultures are ever-changing in response to the physical and social environment. In the present paper, we integrate theories and methods from cultural neuroscience with the emerging body of research on cultural change and suggest several ways in which the two fields can inform each other. First, we propose that the cultural change perspective helps us reexamine what is meant by culturally typical experiences, which are shaped by the dynamic interaction between cultural norms, values, meanings, and other environmental constraints on behavior. It also allows us to make predictions about the variability/stability of cultural neural differences over time. Then, we discuss how methods used in cultural change research may be applied to cultural neuroscience research and vice versa. We end with a “blue sky vision” for a neuroscience of cultural change.
... Personal dispositions emerge naturally as the result of one's natural inclinations and exposure to applicable situations ( Sasaki & Kim, 2017 ). Helping individuals develop positive professional dispositions is attempted in a variety of formal settings ( LaVelle & Donaldson, 2015 ), but the pedagogy for teaching essential evaluator dispositions is considerably diff erent from that used to teaching knowledge, skills, and abilities (LaVelle et al., 2020 ). ...
A basic principle associated with competent evaluation practice asserts that evaluators should possess the education, abilities, skills, and experience needed to undertake the tasks proposed in an evaluation. For those training evaluators this also means teaching professional dispositions, because an individual’s dispositions (i.e., beliefs and values) influence how they will act as professionals. In order for evaluation educators to teach evaluator competencies, we must understand the underlying dispositions associated with each competency. We must also identify which dispositions are essential for professional practice. This paper discusses the issue of dispositions and the challenges of helping evaluators develop positive professional dispositions.
... Indeed, prior research has demonstrated several examples of the gene × culture interaction effect on behavioural phenotypes (for reviews, see Han et al. 2013;Kitayama and Uskul 2011;Sasaki and Kim 2017). For instance, high-expression variants of a dopamine receptor D4 gene (DRD4 VNTR) polymorphism, coded by the 2-and the 7-repeat (2R and 7R, respectively) alleles, have been found to be associated with stronger conformity to cultural norms compared with the low-expression 4-repeat (4R) allele (Kitayama et al. 2014). ...
A previous Japanese study has shown that the short (s) allele of the serotonin-transporter-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR), implicated in higher sensitivity to aversive stimuli, may promote motor inhibitory control in conditions where impulsivity is punished. The present study conducted in Australia replicates this Japanese study to examine if culture modulates the observed gene–behaviour link. Japan has a tight culture, where norm adherence and low impulsivity are emphasised. In contrast, Australia is a loose culture, where deviation from norms is tolerated to a greater extent. We therefore expected that the s-allele carriers’ strong motor inhibitory control in aversive conditions might be weaker in Australia than in Japan. Ninety-eight second-generation Australians of East Asian heritage, including 53s/s-allele carriers, 32s/l-allele carriers and 11l/l-allele carriers, participated in the reward/punishment-go/nogo task. As expected, s/s carriers in Australia, compared with their peers in Japan, showed higher impulsivity when inappropriate responding was punished (i.e. punishment-nogo conditions) but lower impulsivity when appropriate non-responding was rewarded (i.e. reward-nogo conditions). In contrast, the behaviours of the Australian s/l-allele carriers were similar to those of their Japanese counterparts. The results suggest that the larger context of culture that provides behavioural norms should be considered when examining gene × environment interaction.
... Anthropologist Joe Henrich's recent tour de force (Henrich 2020) on why "weird" Westerners are "psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous" puts culture, especially the radically new exogenous marriage practices instituted by the Church, along with literacy, at the center of the story. You can find culture in the brain, according to the growing area of cultural neuroscience (Sasaki and Kim 2017) and related disciplines. History uses it extensively, along with political scientists like Ron Inglehart and social psychologists like Geert Hofstede and Shalom Schwartz, whose work on worldwide cultural contrasts has been cited thousands of times. ...
... Anthropologist Joe Henrich's recent tour de force (Henrich 2020) on why "weird" Westerners are "psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous" puts culture, especially the radically new exogenous marriage practices instituted by the Church, along with literacy, at the center of the story. You can find culture in the brain, according to the growing area of cultural neuroscience (Sasaki and Kim 2017) and related disciplines. History uses it extensively, along with political scientists like Ron Inglehart and social psychologists like Geert Hofstede and Shalom Schwartz, whose work on worldwide cultural contrasts has been cited thousands of times. ...
... It is worth noting that susceptibility to different kinds of threat may differ depending on people's motivations (Sasaki & Kim, 2017). For example, physical violence should be especially threatening to those who are physically vulnerable and thus motivated to protect themselves, and social threats should be especially concerning to those who are motivated to affiliate. ...
Cultural neuroscience research has provided substantial evidence that culture shapes the brain by providing systematically different sets of experiences. However, cultures are ever-changing in response to the physical and social environment. In the present paper, we integrate theories and methods from cultural neuroscience with the emerging body of research on cultural change and suggest several ways in which the two fields can inform each other. First, we propose that the cultural change perspective helps us reexamine what is meant by culturally typical experiences, which are shaped by the dynamic interaction between cultural norms, values, meanings, and other environmental constraints on behavior. It also allows us to make predictions about the variability/stability of cultural neural differences over time. Then, we discuss how methods used in cultural change research may be applied to cultural neuroscience research and vice versa. We end with a “blue sky vision” for a neuroscience of cultural change.
... There is growing evidence that the associations between specific genes and behavioral and psychological tendencies are culturally moderated. While genetic influences shape individuals' predispositions, cultural influences shape their manifestation, in terms of social behaviors and psychological outcomes (Sasaki & Kim, 2017). For instance, Japanese with the SS genotype of the serotonin gene 5-HTTLPR detect the disappearance of smiles quicker compared with Japanese with SL and LL genotypes, while this effect is absent in Americans and in Asian Americans (Ishii, Kim, Sasaki, Shinada, & Kusumi, 2014). ...
The search for neural correlates of emotional consciousness has gained momentum in the last decades. Nonetheless, disagreements concerning the mechanisms that determine the experiential qualities of emotional consciousness – the what is it like to feel an emotion - as well as on their neural correlates have far reaching consequence on how researchers study and measure emotion, sometimes leading to seemingly irresolvable impasses. The current paper lays out in a balanced way the viewpoint of both cognitive and precognitive approaches to emotional consciousness, on the basis of commonalities and differences between the claims of some relevant theories of emotions. We examine the sufficiency of the existing evidence in support of the proposed theories of emotional consciousness, by going through the methodological specificity of the study of emotional consciousness and its unique challenges, highlighting what can and cannot be imported by advances on research on perceptual consciousness. We propose that there are three key experimental contrasts which are each equally necessary in the search for the neural correlates of emotional consciousness, each contrast alone coming with its own limitations. We conclude by acknowledging some of the most promising avenues in the field which may help go beyond current limitations and collaboratively piece together the puzzle of emotional consciousness.
... Religion can be conceptualized as part of the broader social or cultural context, as one form of culture (Cohen, 2009) that can satisfy the need for meaning (Inzlicht, Tullett, & Good, 2011) and provide a coherent structure for beliefs, expectations, and actions. The human mind is shaped by a complex interplay of cultural and biological factors (Kim & Sasaki, 2014;Sasaki & Kim, 2017). Religion-as part of the socio-cultural context-works in concert with biological processes of the people who believe in its creeds and enact its rituals. ...
Religion is a product of evolutionary and biological processes. Thus, understanding why some people are religious and how it impacts their everyday lives requires an integrated perspective. This review presents a theoretical framework incorporating recent findings on religious influences on the behavioral expression of genetic and psychological predispositions. We propose that religion may facilitate ego dampening, or weakening of the impact of one’s internal drive, for the service of sociality. Evidence from gene–environment interaction and behavioral studies suggests that religious beliefs and practices may dampen more prepotent, self-focused motives that can be at odds with cooperation and social cohesion. The review underscores the importance of taking an interdisciplinary perspective to understand complex and fundamental questions about religion.
... (Alós-Ferrer, 2018), (Sasaki, & Kim, 2017), (Berni, Muldal, & Pulver, 2010), (Farrokhian, Bahrabad, 2017). ...
While Neuromarketing sounds a totally obscure term to some people, it has a substantial deeply-rooted effect in directing the consumerism wave that’s approaching our world. Thus, the study views the Neuromarketing as a science from the view of both marketers and neuroscientists, and then approaching the consumer behavior from the prospect of the unconscious effect that the subliminal and motivational stimuli have on the consumers along with including their experiences and nature that affect their personality traits and genetics as well. And while the above seems promising to finally understand the nature of the measurable relation between those variables, the research then spots the light on the manipulation and privacy invasion nature of the research that questions ethical point of view for the whole concept. Then the research methodology surveys a sample of the study’s targeted population to then test the main relationship aimed with its varied aspects through six main variables conducted.
... While shaping biological processes in development, culture also selects from bi ology. A gene-culture interaction model reveals that psychological differences among cul tures are linked to biological processes (e.g., brain changes due to cultural learning), as shown by research on gene-environment and gene-culture interactions, on physiological processes in different cultures, and on neural processes related to cultural differences in psychological outcomes (review by Sasaki & Kim, 2017). Environmental influences de pend on biological factors. ...
In past research on moral development, moral values and cultural considerations have been widely ignored. Therefore, questions of universality and cultural specificity in the development of moral values are addressed here. First, the author reviews preconditions of moral value development, including precursors of self-construal. The internalization process of moral values reveals the importance of self-regulation capacities and the motivating dynamic of moral values. Second, the focus is on the development of moral values in diverse cultural contexts. The multilevel structure of socialization conditions is examined in light of different cultural models for moral values and their emotional components. The concluding part suggests broadening research on moral development by focusing on implications of ongoing socioeconomic and cultural changes and cultural encounters.
... However, some studies also reported that beneficial traits associated were with G allele (e.g., Chen et al., 2011). The diverse effect of the G allele may be due to different cultures as previous studies have shown the culture-dependent effect of alleles (e.g., Sasaki et al., 2013;Sasaki & Kim, 2017). ...
Background and Objectives: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive disorder are commonly experienced mental disorders among psychological trauma victims. Few studies have investigated the genetic basis for population heterogeneity of trauma-related psychopathology, including PTSD and depression. This study examined the main and interaction effects of the OXTR rs53576 genotype in distinguishing four subgroups identified by symptom profiles of PTSD and depression symptoms using latent profile analysis.
Design: A cross-sectional design with a gene-environment interaction approach was adopted in the current study.
Methods: This study was a secondary data analysis conducted on a sample of 1196 adult earthquake survivors. Participants completed assessments of earthquake exposure, PTSD symptoms, and depression symptoms. The rs53576 polymorphism of OXTR was genotyped using a custom-by-design 2×48-Plex SNPscanTMKit.
Results: Multinomial logistic regression analyses revealed the main effects of the rs53576 genotype on symptom profiles. Specifically, G allele carriers were more likely in the combined PTSD-depression group than in the low symptom, predominantly depression, and predominantly PTSD groups. No significant interaction effects between this genotype and earthquake exposure on symptom profiles were found.
Conclusions: Our findings support a genetic basis for trauma-related psychopathology heterogeneity. Furthermore, results provide preliminary evidence for the role of OXTR in PTSD/depression comorbidity.
... While traditional evolutionary psychology, motivated in part by the assumption that genetic evolution takes place at a glacial pace, has been preoccupied with hypothetical accounts of the evolutionary pressures under which our prehistoric ancestors lived, the cognitive gadgets model instead suggests that evolutionary forces relevant to psychology are far more recent and rapid. As our understanding of the complex interaction between genes and environment grows, the metaphor of genetic transmission as a process of downloading modules wholesale, as in transmission between two computers, becomes less and less persuasive (Sasaki and Kim 2017). If the cognitive gadgets theory is correct, it implies not a divorce of psychology from evolution, but a correction of a deep misunderstanding of how evolution, and ontogeny, actually take place. ...
Recent years have seen the growing promise of cultural evolutionary theory as a new approach to bringing human behaviour fully within the broader evolutionary synthesis. This review of two recent seminal works on this topic argues that cultural evolution now holds the potential to bring together fields as disparate as neuroscience and social anthropology within a unified explanatory and ontological framework.
... However, while it seems as though an innate capacity for empathy is in conflict with an ability to develop empathy through training, it is possible that the former may be, to a degree, deterministic of the extent to which the latter can occur. This is supported by literature suggesting the presence of an interplay between what is innate to the individual and their environmental influences (Kandler & Zapko-Willmes, 2017;Sasaki & Kim, 2017). Kandler and Zapko-Willmes (2017) summarize this relationship as follows: ...
Background: Empathy is essential to forming strong patient-physician relationships that enable physicians to provide better healthcare. In the medical education literature, empathy consists of cognitive, affective, behavioural, and moral domains. Studies have measured declines in empathy during medical training. Researchers speculate that factors within formal, informal, and hidden curricula contribute to empathic decline. Several frameworks suggest that empathy in the moral domain (i.e., the inner motivation to accept patients unconditionally, commit to understanding patients, and help patients achieve their needs) is the most fundamental to the empathic response. Studying the factors that influence moral empathy during training is important to developing insights into the reasons for the demonstrated declines in resident empathy.
Methods: Descriptive phenomenology was used to address the research objective. Medical residents from various specialties participated in lightly structured interviews concerning their experiences. Interview transcripts were inductively and collaboratively analyzed to construct a preliminary set of factors that influence moral empathy. These factors informed the creation of a script for a verbatim theatre play that was performed for an audience of residents, educators, learners, researchers, and scholars. Following the play, audience participants completed a survey that served as a member-check of the factors that contributed to the final construction of factors.
Results: The results were constructed as three categories under which seven factors are nested. These categories are: Innate Capacity, Previous Personal Encounters, and Specific Patient Encounters. With the exception of a few, most factors do not directly influence residents’ moral empathy but rather challenge their ability to act on their moral empathy.
Discussion: These results offer unique insights into the declines in empathy that have been previously reported in the medical education literature, while also highlighting a moral-behavioural tension that has implications for competency-based medical education, the four-factor model of empathy, and the assessment of empathy in medical education. Future work may build on the results of this study to develop an assessment tool for moral empathy and to elucidate the relationships between the domains of empathy in order to arrive at a more refined conceptualization of the construct.
... The classic debate between nature vs nurture, or innate vs learned takes the separation between evolution vs learning in explaining behaviour [10], [9]. Recent studies from Evolutionary Psychology [13], [14] have shown that neither of these extremes can give the full account for the behaviour of living organisms, especially when it comes to explain the behaviour of humans. ...
This paper presents a technique called evolving self-supervised neural networks - neural networks that can teach themselves, intrinsically motivated, without external supervision or reward. The proposed method presents some sort-of paradigm shift, and differs greatly from both traditional gradient-based learning and evolutionary algorithms in that it combines the metaphor of evolution and learning, more specifically self-learning, together, rather than treating these phenomena alternatively. I simulate a multi-agent system in which neural networks are used to control autonomous foraging agents with little domain knowledge. Experimental results show that only evolved self-supervised agents can demonstrate some sort of intelligent behaviour, but not evolution or self-learning alone. Indications for future work on evolving intelligence are also presented.
Introduction. The major research problem of the article is the necessity to develop and improve the methods of assessing the degree of formation of students’ values using the indicators of eye tracking activities to increase the accuracy of value orientations assessments and their influence on professional development in the conditions of modern educational requirements. Materials and Methods. The research methodology is based on a comprehensive approach to the study of students’ values and includes two main methods: a linguistic questionnaire and an eye tracking method. Results. Using data from the linguistic questionnaire, the authors identified two groups of respondents - with formed and unformed values. Participants with different levels of values demonstrated different dilemma-solving strategies. Through the use of the eye tracking method, the authors determined the features of eye tracking patterns depending on the degree of formed values. Statistically significant differences in value perception were found for three dilemmas (Parenting/Citizenship, Work/Recreation, Physical Well-being/Sports): respondents with unformed values spent more time reading the text of the dilemma. Nevertheless, the lack of significant differences overall, as well as the diversity of behavioral patterns among individuals with unformed values in the face of difficult moral choices, suggests that the prospects for applying iTracking technology in such studies require further discussion. Conclusions. The study did not confirm the presence of significant differences in the parameters of visual perception between subjects with formed and unformed values, but statistically significant differences were found in some features, in particular, the number and duration of fixations during decision making. The application of the eye tracking method to assess the level of values formation requires a comprehensive approach, including qualitative analysis of a linguistic questionnaire or an interview.
The research aimed to examine how religious awareness affects the level of religiosity, with virtual Islamic da’wah content as an intervening variable. Data was collected from respondents using a survey method, and path analysis was used to test the relationship between these variables. The results indicate that religious awareness does not have a direct significant influence on the level of religiosity, with a path coefficient of 0.363. However, religious awareness does significantly influence the content of virtual Islamic da’wah, with a path coefficient of 0.012. Interestingly, the content of virtual Islamic da’wah itself does not significantly affect the level of religiosity, with a path coefficient of 0.880. The analysis of the coefficient of determination (R Square) revealed that the religious awareness model could only explain 1.5% of the variation in the level of religiosity, while the model for virtual Islamic da’wah content could only explain 1.2% of the variation in the da’wah content itself. Additionally, the results of the Sobell test show that virtual Islamic da’wah content is not an intervening variable that significantly mediates the influence of religious awareness on the level of religiosity. The conclusion drawn from this research is that there are likely other factors outside the model that have a greater influence on a person’s level of religiosity. These findings suggest the need for further studies to explore other factors that can influence an individual’s level of religiosity, as well as the role of virtual Islamic da’wah content in different contexts.
Teachers are an important source of inspiration for their students. Although educational research considers inspiration to be an important motivational construct that generates positive results for students, the different conceptual interpretations of the construct have made its study difficult. This situation is accentuated in the context of Latin America, due to the scarcity of empirical studies that contribute to its understanding. Considering the teacher as a source of inspiration and based on the inspiration model of Thrash & Elliot (2003, 2004), this study seeks to understand how students experience inspiration. Twenty university students were interviewed about their experiences of inspiration about their professors. The interviews were evaluated through thematic analysis. The results revealed 5 themes that highlight the characteristics of the inspiring teacher. Additionally, the thematic analyzes verified the existence of the three characteristics of the inspiration model (evocation: 1 theme, transcendence: 3 themes, and motivation: 4 themes). The study contributes by laying the foundations for formulating a guide that characterizes the inspiring teacher. As well as formulate positive insights focused on the characteristics of inspiration that allow students to transcend professionally through their university studies.
Neuroscience evidence is appealing as a means to increase “objectivity” and reduce racial disparities in the criminal legal system. However, increasing reliance on defendants’ brain data may instead maintain racial disparities while rendering biases invisible. First, neurobiological data are not any more objective than traditional psychological measures. Second, the complexity and inaccessibility of neuroscience undermines public understanding of what such data can actually say. Third, existing methodologies have limitations when working with hair types and skin colors that are socially coded as Black; these phenotypic biases reduce both the reliability of individual data and the representativeness of comparison groups, skewing interpretations of defendants’ brain data. More research is needed before neuroscience evidence can be considered more probative than prejudicial.
Using the concept of "plasticity", or the brain’s ability to change through growth and reorganization, as a theoretical framework, this book argues that encouraging an exploration of the self better establishes emotional value in the composition classroom.
This book explores recent evidence from studies in modern neuroscience to provide biological correlations between current and developing theory and pedagogy in Composition Studies. Starting with the concept of self, each subsequent chapter builds a neurobiological understanding of how emotional value, intrinsic motivation, creativity and happiness are constructed and felt. This material exploration shows how these factors can maintain motivation, improve long-term memory, encourage creative risk, and initiate complex considerations of being. Recognizing the shift in Composition Studies to posthuman and new materialist methodologies, this modern neuroscience is presented as a useful parallel to—rather than being at odds with—these and other current methodologies, theories, and pedagogies.
Outlining the need for a more student-focused, guided-discovery framework for the composition classroom, this interdisciplinary resource will be of interest to scholars and students in the field of Composition Studies, Communication Studies, Education, Psychology and Philosophy.
Research using psychophysiological methods holds great promise for refining clinical assessment, identifying risk factors, and informing treatment. Unfortunately, unique methodological features of existing approaches limit inclusive research participation and, consequently, generalizability. In this brief overview and commentary, we provide a snapshot of the current state of representation in clinical psychophysiology with a focus on the forms and consequences of ongoing exclusion of Black participants. We illustrate issues of inequity and exclusion that are unique to clinical psychophysiology and consider intersections among social constructions of Blackness and biased design of current technology used to measure electroencephalography, skin conductance, and other signals. We then highlight work by groups dedicated to quantifying and addressing these limitations. We discuss the need for reflection and input from a wider variety of affected individuals to develop and refine new technologies given the risk of further widening disparities. Finally, we provide broad recommendations for clinical-psychophysiology research.
In this conceptual paper, we discuss the evolutionary root causes of institutional complexity, defined as inherently incompatible prescriptions when different sources of institutions intersect at the same space and time. We suggest that societies are not delineated by clear-cut boundaries, but dynamically evolve along multiple co-existing levels of social lineages, each of which is associated with a given replicator. Institutional complexity thus can be conceived as a mix of potentially conflicting dispositions due to replicators derived from different historically separate social lineages. Decomposing institutional complexity into its evolutionary roots, we identify two types of inherent incompatibility that define institutional complexity: the incompatibilities between co-existing levels of the same social lineage as they evolve, and the incompatibilities between social lineages at the same level as they synthesize after having been separate in history but intersect again at the same space and time. Implications are discussed for future institutional studies.
With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, work and leisure is expected to change, and human creative competence is expected to be increasingly important, partly for the workplace and the economy, but also for thriving and well-being. There is some interest in fostering creative competence in mathematics, where it is seen as relating largely to mathematical problem solving, when solutions are not matters of routine, at least for the student. Early studies, however, indicate little impact on teaching, which has tended to adhere to past practices without creative competence being an explicit goal or provision for achieving it. A belief that such a competence will grow undirected and unaided, or that it is only for the gifted student goes against current views of creative potential. Such beliefs could present obstacles to change, yet seem to have received little explicit exploration. This study aimed to identify some of the obstacles to fostering mathematics undergraduates’ creative thinking arising from tutors’ notions of mathematical creativity and its place in education. The views of twenty-two UK university mathematics tutors were collected and collated by phenomenographic analysis, a qualitative method designed to identify categories of belief. This showed latent potential problems arising from differences in the tutors’ beliefs about creativity (e.g. creativity being in the process or the product), and about its origin (e.g. creativity arising from nature or nurture). Adding these to students’ beliefs increases reservations about a readiness to foster students’ creative competences in mathematics. Ways of overcoming these obstacles are suggested. We felt it essential that mathematicians have a common understanding of mathematical creativity, and that certain myths about creative abilities are corrected. These understandings need to be shared with students, and provision made for fostering their creative thinking at a macro level (e.g. courses and workshops) and a micro level (e.g. rubrics to guide thinking). Collaborative creative thinking is also valued in the workplace. It would add to students’ assets if this provision included opportunities to practise it.
An integrated theory framework for psychology that spans disciplinary boundaries and ensures a commitment to improving quality of life and wellbeing requires concepts with minimal preconceptions but is comprehensive enough. It must also be able to address challenges to human welfare that have escalated in our times. The first part of the paper suggests a minimalist-comprehensive framework within which an integrated discipline of psychology could situate itself. It recognizes three constitutive dimensions of the human condition as nature, society and self. Following Habermas’ (1976:15) suggestion that the essence of rationality is human inability to “not-learn”, it associates them with the three dimensions of rationality: cognitive/instrumental, moral/practical and transformative/liberating. I see psychology as focusing on the third dimension. Work, as creative and productive social activity, is central to the human condition. It brings into play all three dimensions. Change in its content and context reflects shifts in nature, society and the individual. The second part deals with norms of justice that govern formal liberal democracies and examines their inadequacy in responding to challenges to human welfare. The paper concludes by recognizing the fact that justice can only serve as a placeholder for true equality until societies move beyond justice.
The paper has been peer reviewed but was not published as the ethical standards in the country where the data was analyzed did not meet the ethical standards of the international journal. As post-facto IRB approval was not sought, the paper remains unpublished.
In this lab, we are going to play House. This will involve small groups forming “families” including parents and children, who will enact the family life cycle: the process by which families begin (mate selection), reproduce (have offspring), and influence those offspring (with an emphasis on the idea that it is not possible to meaningfully distinguish between nature effects and nurture effects; all behaviors are a combination of both nature and nurture) and how those offspring take that influence into their own search for mates. The fundamental aspect is for each individual, and each generation, to answer the question: what is the safest kind of home? Does this vary by the nature and structure of a family group?
Adults are biologically responsive to context, and their responses to particular situations may differ across cultures. However, are preschoolers' biological systems also responsive to situational contexts and cultures? Here, we show that children's neurobiological stress responses, as indexed by salivary cortisol, are activated and responsive to psychosocial stressors relevant to their sociocultural emphases. By examining cortisol changes across different contexts among 138 preschoolers living in the United States, China, and Japan, we found that an achievement-related stressor elicited an increased cortisol response among Chinese preschoolers, whereas interpersonal-related stressors elicited an increased cortisol response among Japanese preschoolers. By contrast, U.S. preschoolers showed decreased cortisol responses after these stressors but consistently higher levels of anticipatory responses to separation at the beginning of each session. Our findings suggest that children's neurobiological stress systems may be a critical biological mechanism allowing societal-level cultural phenomena to be embodied in individual-level responses, even among preschoolers.
Identifying ourselves as to what the key psychological characteristics of the present are, we can quite reasonably state uncertainty and confusion as such. The confusion comes not when the future is obscure, as it is incomprehensible by definition; it comes when the present and its potential consequences are not clear. It is this circumstance that served as the basis for making the concept of temporality in the aspect of disorientation the focus of our research. The author asserts that the deterministic and indeterministic directions in the development of socio-humanitarian knowledge is a deadlock for the researchers. He suggests socio-cultural dialogical interdeterminism as an alternative. The heterogeneous nature of social phenom- enology is reflected in the three four-dimensional heteroqualitative continua, the spheres of the psychic and the behavioral determinants. The prospects of analyzing temporality as a nonlinear dynamic system are quite promising. This approach enables researchers to con- sider the specificity of heterogeneity and the dynamic nature of social phenomenology. It also allows determining points of bifurcation which show the transition from one qualitative state to another one. The article gives a general description of the socio-cultural dialogical inter- determinist metatheory of socio-humanitarian knowledge integration and demonstrates its heuristic potential. It also shows a mutually influential and mutually changing nature of hu- man interaction with the internal and external environment, which results in finding a good balance to ensure optimal interaction within a definite space-time location. The specific char- acter of interdetermination is manifested in the acquisition of a new quality that cannot be reduced to the simple sum of its parts. Human beings, like other animals, not only adapt them- selves to the changes in the external environment but adjust it to themselves. An ill-conceived adjustment can lead to ruinous consequences both for man’s mental functioning and for his being at large. In this context, dialogue is considered the best means to achieve balance. The author defines the terms for effective dialogue and gives examples of how cultural dialogical interdeterminism works.
Drawing on recent evidence suggesting that individuals having the G allele of the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) polymorphism are especially susceptible to socio-cultural environmental influences, including cultural norms, the present study investigated the interplay of culture and two OXTR polymorphisms (rs53576 and rs2254298) in the domain of emotional expressivity, which is culturally encouraged in Western cultures. Testing Japanese and European Canadian undergraduates, we found cultural differences in negative emotional expressivity and positive emotional expressivity. As expected, the European Canadians were greater in positive emotional expressivity than the Japanese. In contrast, the pattern was reversed in negative emotional expressivity. A series of multiple regression analyses entering gender and personality traits as control variables showed that neither culture nor the two OXTR polymorphisms interact to negative emotional expressivity and positive emotional expressivity. The present null findings suggest that continued examination with larger samples would better elucidate results on the interactions among culture, OXTR, and socioemotional behaviors.
The first part of the paper suggests a minimalist framework for integrating the discipline of psychology. Such a framework must rest on the principle of parsimony, build on fewest and simplest possible axiomatic assumptions and yet be able to contain, sustain and benefit from the enormous diversity of its interests and approaches, its ever-widening research enterprise and its unique relationship to neuroscience that situates it felicitously between natural and human sciences. I take the Kantian questions about the human condition as the starting point to link the concepts of reason, work and autonomy to the idea of self as transformative agency that straddles the domains of nature and society the way psychology does. The second part of the paper takes Rawls’ idea of society beyond justice, with reference Marx, to show why justice must act as the placeholder for equality in formal procedural democracies and to chart the direction that psychology should follow to meet the challenge of becoming more relevant for human welfare in this neoliberal age of deepening inequalities and mounting social, political and personality crises.
Fidel Castro war einer der bedeutendsten und zugleich umstrittensten Diktatoren des 20. Jahrhunderts. Umstritten war er, weil er die Grundrechte gegeneinander ausspielte: das Recht auf freie Meinungsbildung gegen das Recht auf medizinische Versorgung und kostenlose Bildung beispielsweise. Mit überragenden 48 Regierungsjahren bietet er viele interessante Anknüpfungspunkte für psychologische Analysen zu seiner Persönlichkeit, familiären Herkunft, Machtmotivation sowie zum historischen Kontext.
Is the human species hard-wired for violence? It is often assumed to be the case, accompanied by the assumption that external controls are needed to mitigate aggressive tendencies. But there are several empirically based counterarguments to this pessimist view, many of which underscore that the pessimistic view reflects shifted baselines—from child-raising practices, to what is considered normal human development and nature. We examine briefly views from ethological, historical, developmental, anthropological, and biological research.
This chapter considers the causes of developing laterality and adopts a multi-factorial perspective. It reviews genetic and environmental contributions, in particular. Genetically, simple Mendelian models do not work, and polygenetic models have more traction. But any one allele suggested as influencing handedness and related lateralities explains very little of the data. Environmental factors include the influence of culture; for example, some cultures might train out left-handedness. Also, parents might model more right-handedness. Further, stress can have indirect environmental effects, such as influencing laterality development prenatally or through early postnatal adversity. Epigenetics provides one influence on laterality development and is burgeoning in the research undertaken. Epigenesis concerns silencing the promoter region of alleles that contributes to a behavioral or nervous system characteristic, such as handedness, for example, through DNA methylation. Stress could be one factor in this gene silencing process . The result is that the alleles involved do not transcribe the proteins to which their function is dedicated, thereby altering development. The chapter concludes with research on cultural neuroscience, illustrating how laterality is influenced by culture, depending on differential neuroscientific/brain patterns over culture. These findings illustrate that laterality development is a biopsychosocial expression as much as other areas of development.
The Western assumption that talking is connected to thinking is not shared in the East. The research examines how the actual psychology of individuals reflects these different cultural assumptions. In Study 1, Asian Americans and European Americans thought aloud while solving reasoning problems. Talking impaired Asian Americans' performance but not that of European Americans. Study 2 showed that participants' beliefs about talking and thinking are correlated with how talking affects performance, and suggested that cultural difference in modes of thinking can explain the difference in the effect of talking. Study 3 showed that talking impaired Asian Americans' performance because they tend to use internal speech less than European Americans. Results illuminate the importance of cultural understanding of psychology for a multicultural society.
Personality continues to change throughout the life course due to both genetic and environmental factors, including the cultural context. Findings from a primarily North American context using cross-sectional and longitudinal designs suggest that people become more conscientious, agreeable, and emotionally stable throughout childhood and adulthood. One question addressed in this chapter is whether these results from North America can be extended to other cultures. We first define culture and the cultural framework that can be adopted to study personality, and then review cultural findings of personality development. Findings provide support for the notion of genetic and environmental influences on personality development at different ages. Finally, we provide suggestions for future research on personality development across cultural groups.
We need technology and an ethical framework for genome-scale engineering.
Previous research has shown that culture and genes can interact to influence social behaviors. Variation of the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) rs53576 polymorphism has been linked to differential susceptibility to cultural influences with genetically susceptible individuals showing more culturally typical behaviors. The present research focuses on a psychological outcome of such behaviors, specifically loneliness, which is an outcome related to well-being. We also considered attachment style as a mediator for the interaction between culture and OXTR genetic variation on loneliness. Previous gene–culture interaction research shows that G-allele carriers may be genetically predisposed to show more culturally typical behaviors and psychological tendencies, compared to A-allele carriers. Thus, we expected that genetically susceptible Japanese would show a more avoidant attachment style (a pattern more common in Japan), while susceptible Americans would show a more secure attachment style (a pattern more common in the U.S.). In both cultures, we expected that greater avoidant relationship tendencies would predict greater loneliness. Participants (217 American and 153 Japanese students) completed scales to measure loneliness and attachment style, and provided saliva for genotyping. As predicted, culture moderated the link between genetic susceptibility and loneliness, with G-allele Americans showing less loneliness than A-allele carriers. Further, the link was mediated by attachment style. Our study extends existing research by showing that gene–culture interactions on relationship patterns have consequences for psychological well-being outcomes.
This study attempted to establish and quantify the connections between parenting, offspring psychosocial adjustment, and the epigenome. The participants, 35 African American young adults (19 females and 16 males; age = 17–29.5 years), represented a subsample of a 3-wave longitudinal 15-year study on the developmental trajectories of low-income urban mother–offspring dyads. Mothers were assessed on their perceptions of maternal stress at each wave. Offspring were assessed on their perceptions of maternal parenting at each wave and on their adaptive and maladaptive behavior at the last wave. Genome-wide DNA methylation in peripheral T lymphocytes at the third wave was assayed using Methyl Binding Domain(MBD) sequencing. Statistically significant associations were identified between the change in offspring's perception of parenting from middle childhood to adulthood and the DNA methylation in offspring's adult genomes. Specifically, the slope of perceived parental rejection across the 3 time points was related to an increase in methylation, or a potential downregulation, of 565 genes thought to be involved in the control of a broad spectrum of biological functions generally related to cellular signaling. A subset of these epigenetic marks, clustered in 23 genes, some of which participate in the development and functioning of the CNS, were in turn associated with psychosocial adjustment as captured by interpersonal relationships and emotional self-evaluation. This appears to be one of the first investigations of the modulating role of the methylome in associations between developmental dynamics of parenting throughout the formative years of child and adolescent development and psychosocial adjustment in adulthood.
Emotional expression is highly valued in individualistic cultures, whereas emotional restraint is prioritized in collectivistic cultures. We hypothesized that high-quality relationships in these cultures would exhibit the forms of support provision congruent with their respective expectations. Study 1 examined support transactions among friends in response to a laboratory stressor and found that objectively judged relationship quality (RQ) more strongly positively predicted emotion-focused support provision behaviors by European Americans than by Asian Americans. Study 2, a questionnaire study, found that self-reported RQ predicted emotion-focused support provision more strongly among European Americans than among Japanese. Study 3 investigated more indirect forms of support and found that RQ more strongly predicted worrying about and monitoring close others enduring stressors and spending time with them without talking about the stressor among Asian Americans compared with European Americans. These findings suggest that RQ is expressed in terms of support provision in culturally normative ways.
Recent evidence suggests that the association between oxytocin receptor polymorphism (OXTR rs53576) and emotion-related behavioral/psychological tendencies differs between individuals from East Asian and Western cultures. What remains unresolved is which specific dimension of cultural orientations interacts with OXTR rs53576 to shape these tendencies and whether such gene × culture interactions occurs at both behavioral and neural level. The present study investigated whether and how OXTR rs53576 interacts with interdependence - a key dimension of cultural orientations that distinguish between East Asian and Western cultures - to affect human empathy that underlies altruistic motivation and prosocial behavior. Experiment 1 measured interdependence, empathy trait and OXTR rs53576 genotypes of 1536 Chinese participants. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed a stronger association between interdependence and empathy trait in G allele carriers compared to A/A homozygotes of OXTR rs53576. Experiment 2 measured neural responses to others' suffering by scanning A/A and G/G homozygous of OXTR rs53576 using functional MRI. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed stronger associations between interdependence and empathic neural responses in the insula, amygdala and superior temporal gyrus in G/G compared to A/A carriers. Our results provide the first evidence for gene × culture interactions on empathy at both behavioral tendency and underlying brain activity.
© The Author (2015). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.
The present research investigated an association between the serotonin transporter polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) and sensitivity to the disappearance of facial expressions cross-culturally and found, for the first time, that cultural norms and practices modulate the association. Participants watched both happy-to-neutral and sad-to-neutral movies and judged the point at which the emotional expressions disappeared. As predicted, the results showed that Japanese with the s/s genotype detected the disappearance of facial expressions (particularly the disappearance of smiles) with greater perceptual efficiency than did those with s/l and l/l genotypes, whereas such a tendency was not found in Americans. This suggests that people with the s/s genotype of 5-HTTLPR are more sensitive to environmental changes, but only when the change is culturally important, compared to people with the long allele. Moreover, Asian Americans’ pattern was much more similar to European Americans than to Japanese, supporting the idea that the differences between cultural groups are indeed due to different cultural experiences.
This article reports differences across 23 countries on 2 processes of emotion regulation––reappraisal and suppression. Cultural dimensions were correlated with country means on both and the relationship between them. Cultures that emphasized the maintenance of social order––that is, those that were long-term oriented and valued embeddedness and hierarchy––tended to have higher scores on suppres-sion, and reappraisal and suppression tended to be positively correlated. In contrast, cultures that minimized the maintenance of social order and valued individual Affective Autonomy and Egalitarianism tended to have lower scores on Suppression, and Reappraisal and Suppression tended to be negatively correlated. Moreover, country-level emotion regulation was significantly correlated with country-level indices of both positive and negative adjustment. The 37 coauthors of this article, in alphabetical order by last name, are as follows:
Although evolutionary psychology has been successful in explaining some species-typical and sex-differentiated adaptations, a large question that has largely eluded the field is this: How can the field successfully explain personality and individual differences? This article highlights some promising theoretical directions for tackling this question. These include life-history theory, costly signaling theory, environmental variability in fitness optima, frequency-dependent selection, mutation load, and flexibly contingent shifts in strategy according to environmental conditions. Tackling the explanatory question also requires progress on three fronts: (a) reframing some personality traits as forms of strategic individual differences; (b) providing a nonarbitrary, evolutionary-based formulation of environments as distributions and salience profiles of adaptive problems; and (c) identifying which strategies thrive and which falter in these differing problem-defined environments.
© 2009 Association for Psychological Science.
Prior research suggests that cultural groups vary on an overarching dimension of independent versus interdependent social orientation, with European Americans being more independent, or less interdependent, than Asians. Drawing on recent evidence suggesting that the dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4) plays a role in modulating cultural learning, we predicted that carriers of DRD4 polymorphisms linked to increased dopamine signaling (7- or 2-repeat alleles) would show higher levels of culturally dominant social orientations, compared with noncarriers. European Americans and Asian-born Asians (total N = 398) reported their social orientation on multiple scales. They were also genotyped for DRD4. As in earlier work, European Americans were more independent, and Asian-born Asians more interdependent. This cultural difference was significantly more pronounced for carriers of the 7- or 2-repeat alleles than for noncarriers. Indeed, no cultural difference was apparent among the noncarriers. Implications for potential coevolution of genes and culture are discussed.
Life satisfaction of migrants to Australia from 17 countries, assessed at 4–5 months, 16–17 months and 3½ years after arrival,
was analyzed with a longitudinal, multilevel analysis. The results indicated that migrants were more satisfied, if the national
average life satisfaction was higher in their country of origin, after adjustment for individual-level income, age, and sex
and a linear temporal trend. Simultaneously, the migrants were also happier if people in their country of origin had a higher
frequency of 5-HTT long allele, a genotype known to be associated with resilience under life stresses. These two relationships
were independent, suggesting that both culture and gene matter in international transitions.
There is increasing evidence for emotional fit in couples and groups, but also within cultures. In the current research, we investigated the consequences of emotional fit at the cultural level. Given that emotions reflect people's view on the world, and that shared views are associated with good social relationships, we expected that an individual's fit to the average cultural patterns of emotion would be associated with relational well-being. Using an implicit measure of cultural fit of emotions, we found across 3 different cultural contexts (United States, Belgium, and Korea) that (1) individuals' emotional fit is associated with their level of relational well-being, and that (2) the link between emotional fit and relational well-being is particularly strong when emotional fit is measured for situations pertaining to relationships (rather than for situations that are self-focused). Together, the current studies suggest that people may benefit from emotionally "fitting in" to their culture. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
This article provides a review of how cultural contexts shape and are shaped by psychological and neurobiological processes. We propose a framework that aims to culturally contextualize behavioral, genetic, neural, and physiological processes. Empirical evidence is presented to offer concrete examples of how neurobiological processes underlie social behaviors, and how these components are interconnected in larger cultural contexts. These findings provide some understanding of how the meanings shared by cultural experiences trigger a neurobiological, psychological, and behavioral chain of events, and how these events may be coordinated and maintained within a person. The review concludes with a reflection on the current state of cultural neuroscience and questions for the field to address. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology Volume 65 is January 03, 2014. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/catalog/pubdates.aspx for revised estimates.
Neural activity in the social brain network varies across individuals with different cultural traits and different genetic polymorphisms. It remains unknown whether a specific genetic polymorphism may influence the association between cultural traits and neural activity in the social brain network. We tested whether the serotonin transporter gene promoter polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) affects the association between self-construals and neural activity involved in reflection of personal attributes of oneself and a significant other. Using functional MRI, we scanned Chinese adults with short/short (s/s) or long/long (l/l) variants of the 5-HTTLPR during reflection of personal attributes of oneself and one's mother. We found that, while s/s and l/l genotype groups did not differ significantly in self-construals measured by the Self-Construal Scale, the relationship between self-construal scores and neural responses to reflection of oneself and mother was significantly different between the two genotype groups. Specifically, l/l but not s/s genotype group showed significant association between self-construal scores and activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, bilateral middle frontal cortex, temporoparietal junction, insula, and hippocampus during reflection on mental attributes of oneself and mother. Our findings suggest that a specific genetic polymorphism may interact with a cultural trait to shape the neural substrates underlying social cognition.
This article offers a conceptual framework for the study of the development of emotion regulation during infancy that synthesizes evolutionary theory with cultural psychology. Two prototypical environments are characterized: Western urban middle-class families and rural farmer families in non-Western societies. The adult psychologies that are adapted to these environments are oriented toward autonomy and relatedness, respectively. A combined methodological approach of quantitative and qualitative procedures demonstrates that the expression of emotions is differently embodied in these environments. Prototypes are composed from different data sets that exemplify socialization goals, parenting ethnotheories, and behavioral strategies. Developmental consequences of the early experiences in different learning environments are presented with respect to children’s emotion regulation during the approach of a stranger. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
The relative importance of emotions versus normative beliefs for life satisfaction judgments was compared among individualist and collectivist nations in 2 large sets of international data (in total, 61 nations,
N = 62,446). Among nations, emotions and life satisfaction correlated significantly more strongly in more individualistic nations (
r = .52 in Study 1;
r = .48 in Study 2). At the individual level, emotions were far superior predictors of life satisfaction to norms (social approval of life satisfaction) in individualist cultures, whereas norms and emotions were equally strong predictors of life satisfaction in collectivist cultures. The present findings have implications for future studies on cultural notions of well-being, the functional value of emotional experiences, and individual differences in life satisfaction profiles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
People in different cultures have strikingly different construals of the self, of others, and of the interdependence of the 2. These construals can influence, and in many cases determine, the very nature of individual experience, including cognition, emotion, and motivation. Many Asian cultures have distinct conceptions of individuality that insist on the fundamental relatedness of individuals to each other. The emphasis is on attending to others, fitting in, and harmonious interdependence with them. American culture neither assumes nor values such an overt connectedness among individuals. In contrast, individuals seek to maintain their independence from others by attending to the self and by discovering and expressing their unique inner attributes. As proposed herein, these construals are even more powerful than previously imagined. Theories of the self from both psychology and anthropology are integrated to define in detail the difference between a construal of the self as independent and a construal of the self as interdependent. Each of these divergent construals should have a set of specific consequences for cognition, emotion, and motivation; these consequences are proposed and relevant empirical literature is reviewed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Chinese ways of dealing with seeming contradictions result in a dialectical or compromise approach—retaining basic elements of opposing perspectives by seeking a "middle way." On the other hand, European–American ways, deriving from a lay version of Aristotelian logic, result in a differentiation model that polarized contradictory perspectives in an effort to determine which factor is position is correct. Five empirical studies showed that dialectical thinking is a form of folk wisdom in Chinese culture: Chinese participants preferred dialectical proverbs containing seeming contradictions more than did American participants. Chinese participants also preferred dialectical resolutions to social conflicts and preferred dialectical arguments over classical Western logical arguments. Furthermore, when 2 apparently contradictory propositions were presented, American participants polarized their views, and Chinese participants were moderately accepting of of both propositions. Origins of these cultural differences and their implications for human reasoning in general are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The objective of the study was to test the hypotheses that humans with genotypes putatively associated with low dopamine (DA) signaling capacity, including the TaqIA A1 allele, DRD2-141C Ins/Ins genotype, DRD4 7-repeat or longer allele, DAT1 10-repeat allele, and the Met/Met COMT genotype, and with a greater number of these genotypes per a multilocus composite, show less responsivity of reward regions that primarily rely on DA signaling. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigms were used to investigate activation in response to receipt and anticipated receipt of palatable food and monetary reward. DNA was extracted from saliva using standard methods. Participants were 160 adolescents (mean age = 15.3 years, SD = 1.07 years; mean body mass index = 20.8, SD = 1.9). The main outcome was blood oxygenation level-dependent activation in the fMRI paradigms. Data confirmed that these fMRI paradigms activated reward, attention, somatosensory, and gustatory regions. Individuals with, versus without, these five genotypes did not show less activation of DA-based reward regions, but those with the Met/Met versus the Val/Val COMT genotype showed less middle temporal gyrus activation and those with the DRD4-L versus the DRD4-S genotype showed less middle occipital gyrus activation in response to monetary reward. Critically, the multilocus composite score revealed that those with a greater number of these genotypes showed less activation in reward regions, including the putamen, caudate, and insula, in response to monetary reward. The results suggest that the multilocus genetic composite is a more sensitive index of vulnerability for low reward region responsivity than individual genotypes.
Humans update their beliefs upon feedback and, accordingly, modify their behaviors to adapt to the complex, changing social environment. However, people tend to incorporate desirable (better than expected) feedback into their beliefs but to discount undesirable (worse than expected) feedback. Such optimistic updating has evolved as an advantageous mechanism for social adaptation. Here, we examine the role of oxytocin (OT)?an evolutionary ancient neuropeptide pivotal for social adaptation?in belief updating upon desirable and undesirable feedback in three studies (n = 320). Using a double-blind, placebo-controlled between- subjects design, we show that intranasally administered OT (IN-OT) augments optimistic belief updating by facilitating updates of desirable feedback but impairing updates of undesirable feedback. The IN-OT-induced impairment in belief updating upon undesirable feedback is more salient in individuals with high, rather than with low, depression or anxiety traits. IN-OT selectively enhances learning rate (the strength of association between estimation error and subsequent update) of desirable feedback. IN-OT also increases participants' confidence in their estimates after receiving desirable but not undesirable feedback, and the OT effect on confidence updating upon desirable feedback mediates the effect of IN-OT on optimistic belief updating. Our findings reveal distinct functional roles of OT in updating the first-order estimation and second-order confidence judgment in response to desirable and undesirable feedback, suggesting a molecular substrate for optimistic belief updating.
Background : Recent meta-analyses have stimulated an active debate on whether the serotonin transporter gene-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) is associated with an elevated vulnerability to psychiatric diseases on exposure to environmental adversity. As a potential mechanism explaining genotype-depended differences in stress sensitivity, altered stress-induced activation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis has been investigated in several experimental studies, with most of the studies comprising small samples. Methods : We evaluated the association of 5-HTTLPR genotype and cortisol reactivity to acute psychosocial stress by applying a meta-analytical technique based on 11 relevant data sets (total N=1686), which were identified through a systematic literature search up to October 2011. Results : The present meta-analysis indicates a small (d=0.27), but significant association between 5-HTTLPR genotype and HPA-axis reactivity to acute psychosocial stress with homozygous carriers of the S allele displaying increased cortisol reactivity compared to individuals with the S/L and L/L genotype. The latter association was not further moderated by participants’ age, sex or the type of stressor. Formal testing revealed no evidence for a substantial selection or publication bias. Conclusions : Our meta-analytical results are consistent with a wide variety of experimental studies indicating a significant association between 5-HTTLPR genotype and intermediate phenotypes related to stress sensitivity. Future studies are needed to clarify the consistency of this effect and to further explore whether altered HPA-axis stress reactivity reflects a potential biological mechanism conveying an elevated risk for the development of stress-related disorders in S allele carriers.
Significance
People tend to incorporate desirable feedback into their beliefs but discount undesirable ones. Such optimistic updating has evolved as an advantageous mechanism for social adaptation and physical/mental health. Here, in three independent studies, we show that intranasally administered oxytocin (OT), an evolutionary ancient neuropeptide pivotal to social adaptation, augments optimistic belief updating by increasing updates and learning of desirable feedback but impairing updates of undesirable feedback. Moreover, the OT-impaired updating of undesirable feedback is more salient in individuals with high, rather than with low, depression or anxiety traits. OT also increases second-order confidence judgment after desirable feedback. These findings reveal a molecular substrate underlying the formation of optimistic beliefs about the future.
All individuals have multiple views of themselves. Whereas the consistency among the different aspects of identity is emphasized in Western cultures, the "multiple selves" are often viewed as coexisting realities in East Asian cultures. This research revisits the classic thesis in psychology that identity consistency is a prerequisite condition of psychological well-being. Between individuals (Study 1), people with a more consistent self-view had a more clear self-knowledge, were more assertive, and, most notably, had self-experiences that were less affected by the perspectives of others. Compared with North American participants. (Study 2), Koreans viewed themselves more flexibly across situations, and their subjective well-being was less predictable from levels of identity consistency. Also, consistent individuals received positive social evaluations from others in the United States but not in Korea.
Evidence that adverse rearing environments exert negative effects particularly on children presumed "vulnerable" for temperamental or genetic reasons may actually reflect something else: heightened susceptibility to the negative effects of risky environments and to the beneficial effects of supportive environments. Building on Belsky's (1997, 2005) evolutionary-inspired proposition that some children are more affected-both for better and for worse-by their rearing experiences than are others, we consider recent work on child vulnerability, including that involving measured genes, along with evidence showing that putatively vulnerable children are especially susceptible to both positive and negative rearing effects. We also consider methodological issues and unanswered questions in the differential-susceptibility equation.
Significance
Despite the fact that social norms are a fundamental aspect of human nature, there has been little research on how social norm violations are detected at the neurobiological level. Combining a new social norm violation paradigm with cross-cultural electroencephalography, we show consistent negative deflection of event-related potential around 400 ms (N400) over the central and parietal regions for both Americans and Chinese in detecting norm violations. However, the N400 at the frontal and temporal regions was evident only among Chinese, illustrating culture-specific neural substrates underlying detecting norm violations. Moreover, the frontal N400 was associated with greater cultural superiority and self-control, as well as lower creativity. The findings shed new light on the neurobiology of the detection of social norm violations.
Previous studies have identified genetic variants linked to increased susceptibility to socio-cultural influences. These studies typically show that individuals with the more susceptible variant of a specific polymorphism exhibit social behavior more in accordance with surrounding cultural norms. Given limitations of the single gene approach, we propose to assess genetic susceptibility with a multi-gene index, composed of polymorphisms previously identified in gene–culture interaction studies. Specifically, we are interested in whether the combined susceptibility index moderates cultural differences in self-expression. In the present study, Americans and Koreans completed psychological and behavioral assessments of self-expression tendencies and provided DNA samples, which were genotyped for preselected OXTR, 5HTR1A, SERT, and DRD4 polymorphisms. Results show that the genetic susceptibility index predicts a wider range of self-expression outcomes than what is predicted by individual polymorphisms. The findings underscore the importance of developing biologically and functionally informed models of genetic influence. Further the work demonstrates a model for examining the effects of multiple genes simultaneously and advances our understanding of how genetic and socio-cultural factors jointly contribute to shape social behaviors.
Behavioral neuroscientists have shown that the neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) plays a key role in social attachment and affiliation in nonhuman mammals. Inspired by this initial research, many social scientists proceeded to examine the associations of OT with trust in humans over the past decade. To conduct this work, they have (a) examined the effects of exogenous OT increase caused by intranasal administration on trusting behavior, (b) correlated individual difference measures of OT plasma levels with measures of trust, and (c) searched for genetic polymorphisms of the OT receptor gene that might be associated with trust. We discuss the different methods used by OT behavioral researchers and review evidence that links OT to trust in humans. Unfortunately, the simplest promising finding associating intranasal OT with higher trust has not replicated well. Moreover, the plasma OT evidence is flawed by how OT is measured in peripheral bodily fluids. Finally, in recent large-sample studies, researchers failed to find consistent associations of specific OT-related genetic polymorphisms and trust. We conclude that the cumulative evidence does not provide robust convergent evidence that human trust is reliably associated with OT (or caused by it). We end with constructive ideas for improving the robustness and rigor of OT research.
Cross-cultural psychology has demonstrated important links between cultural context and individual behavioural development. Given this relationship, cross-cultural research has increasingly investigated what happens to individuals who have developed in one cultural context when they attempt to re-establish their lives in another one. The long-term psychological consequences of this process of acculturation are highly variable, depending on social and personal variables that reside in the society of origin, the society of settlement, and phenomena that both exist prior to, and arise during, the course of acculturation. This article outlines a conceptual framework within which acculturation and adaptation can be investigated, and then presents some general findings and conclusions based on a sample of empirical studies.
Three aspects of the self (private, public, collective) with different probabilities in different kinds of social environments were sampled. Three dimensions of cultural variation (individualism-collectivism, tightness-looseness, cultural complexity) are discussed in relation to the sampling of these three aspects of the self. The more complex the culture, the more frequent the sampling of the public and private self and the less frequent the sampling of the collective self. The more individualistic the culture, the more frequent the sampling of the private self and the less frequent the sampling of the collective self. Collectivism, external threat, competition with outgroups, and common fate increase the sampling of the collective self. Cultural homogeneity results in tightness and in the sampling of the collective self. The article outlines theoretical links among aspects of the environment, child-rearing patterns, and cultural patterns, which are linked to differential sampling of aspects of the self. Such sampling has implications for social behavior. Empirical investigations of some of these links are reviewed.
Using a genetic moderation approach, this study examines how an experimental prime of religion impacts self-control in a social context, and whether this effect differs depending on the genotype of an oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) polymorphism (rs53576). People with different genotypes of OXTR seem to have different genetic orientations toward sociality, which may have consequences for the way they respond to religious cues in the environment. In order to determine whether the influence of religion priming on self-control is socially motivated, we examine whether this effect is stronger for people who have OXTR genotypes that should be linked to greater rather than less social sensitivity (i.e., GG vs. AA/AG genotypes). The results showed that experimentally priming religion increased self-control behaviors for people with GG genotypes more so than people with AA/AG genotypes. Furthermore, this Gene × Religion interaction emerged in a social context, when people were interacting face to face with another person. This research integrates genetic moderation and social psychological approaches to address a novel question about religion's influence on self-control behavior, which has implications for coping with distress and psychopathology. These findings also highlight the importance of the social context for understanding genetic moderation of psychological effects.
First-generation students experience a cultural mismatch in university settings. ► This mismatch leads to an aversive state that affects biological functioning. ► Independent norms produced a social class gap in cortisol and negative emotions. ► Interdependent norms eliminated the social class gap in cortisol and negative emotions. American universities increasingly admit rst-generation students—students whose parents do not have four-year degrees. Once admitted, these students experience greater challenges adjusting to universities compared to continuing-generation students—students who have at least one parent with a four-year degree. This additional adversity is typically explained in terms of rst-generation students' relative lack of economic (e.g., money) or academic (e.g., preparation) resources. We propose that this adversity also stems from a cultural mismatch between the mostly middle-class, independent norms institutionalized in American uni-versities and the relatively interdependent norms that rst-generation students are socialized with in working-class contexts before college. As predicted, an experiment revealed that framing the university culture in terms of independent norms (cultural mismatch) led rst-generation students to show greater increases in cortisol and less positive/more negative emotions than continuing-generation students while giving a speech. However, reframing the university culture to include interdependent norms (cultural match) eliminated this gap.
Culture-gene coevolutionary theory posits that cultural values have evolved, are adaptive and influence the social and physical environments under which genetic selection operates. Here, we examined the association between cultural values of individualism-collectivism and allelic frequency of the serotonin transporter functional polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) as well as the role this culture-gene association may play in explaining global variability in prevalence of pathogens and affective disorders. We found evidence that collectivistic cultures were significantly more likely to comprise individuals carrying the short (S) allele of the 5-HTTLPR across 29 nations. Results further show that historical pathogen prevalence predicts cultural variability in individualism-collectivism owing to genetic selection of the S allele. Additionally, cultural values and frequency of S allele carriers negatively predict global prevalence of anxiety and mood disorder. Finally, mediation analyses further indicate that increased frequency of S allele carriers predicted decreased anxiety and mood disorder prevalence owing to increased collectivistic cultural values. Taken together, our findings suggest culture-gene coevolution between allelic frequency of 5-HTTLPR and cultural values of individualism-collectivism and support the notion that cultural values buffer genetically susceptible populations from increased prevalence of affective disorders. Implications of the current findings for understanding culture-gene coevolution of human brain and behaviour as well as how this coevolutionary process may contribute to global variation in pathogen prevalence and epidemiology of affective disorders, such as anxiety and depression, are discussed.
Research suggests that inflammation may partially mediate the link between supportiveness of social relationships and physical health. However, cultural differences between Asians and European Americans in the nature of relationships and in seeking social support suggest that there may be cultural differences in the relation between supportive relationships and proinflammatory activity. One hundred and twenty-one young adult participants completed assessments of support from their close relationships (parents, romantic partner, and close friends) and provided oral mucosal transudate samples for assessment of the proinflammatory cytokines interleukin-6 (IL-6) and the type II soluble receptor for tumor necrosis factor-α (sTNFαRII). As predicted, more supportive relationships were related to lower levels of IL-6 among European Americans, but not among Asian Americans. There were no relations to sTNFαRII in either group. We conclude that associations between supportive relationships and inflammatory activity may differ in ways that reflect cultural differences in the construal of relationships and social support.
This review examines the hypothesis that oxytocin pathways-which include the neuropeptide oxytocin, the related peptide vasopressin, and their receptors-are at the center of physiological and genetic systems that permitted the evolution of the human nervous system and allowed the expression of contemporary human sociality. Unique actions of oxytocin, including the facilitation of birth, lactation, maternal behavior, genetic regulation of the growth of the neocortex, and the maintenance of the blood supply to the cortex, may have been necessary for encephalization. Peptide-facilitated attachment also allows the extended periods of nurture necessary for the emergence of human intellectual development. In general, oxytocin acts to allow the high levels of social sensitivity and attunement necessary for human sociality and for rearing a human child. Under optimal conditions oxytocin may create an emotional sense of safety. Oxytocin dynamically moderates the autonomic nervous system, and effects of oxytocin on vagal pathways, as well as the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects of this peptide, help to explain the pervasive adaptive consequences of social behavior for emotional and physical health. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology Volume 65 is January 03, 2014. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/catalog/pubdates.aspx for revised estimates.
Given the mounting empirical evidence to support both the cultural and biological shaping of emotional processes, there is a clear need to integrate these determinants of emotional processes. Much in the same vein as these efforts, in our research on gene-culture interactions, we have examined how cultural and biological factors jointly influence emotion regulation. The present paper specifically aims to present research considering both cultural and genetic factors as two interacting influences that shape emotion regulation. A series of studies conducted to test the gene-culture interaction involving OXTR rs53576 consistently show that individuals with the variant that is associated with socio-emotional sensitivity tend to utilize culturally normative forms of emotion regulation more than those without it. These findings underscore the importance of considering the interplay between socio-cultural and genetic factors that shape social behaviors.
Previous studies conducted in Western cultures have shown that negative emotions predict higher levels of pro-inflammatory biomarkers, specifically interleukin-6 (IL-6). This link between negative emotions and IL-6 may be specific to Western cultures where negative emotions are perceived to be problematic and thus may not extend to Eastern cultures where negative emotions are seen as acceptable and normal. Using samples of 1044 American and 382 Japanese middle-aged and older adults, we investigated whether the relationship between negative emotions and IL-6 varies by cultural context. Negative emotions predicted higher IL-6 among American adults, whereas no association was evident among Japanese adults. Furthermore, the interaction between culture and negative emotions remained even after controlling for demographic variables, psychological factors (positive emotions, neuroticism, extraversion), health behaviors (smoking status, alcohol consumption), and health status (chronic conditions, BMI). These findings highlight the role of cultural context in shaping how negative emotions affect inflammatory physiology and underscore the importance of cultural ideas and practices relevant to negative emotions for understanding of the interplay between psychology, physiology, and health. (172 words).
The present study examined cultural differences in interpersonal stress experiences in Japan and the United States. Japanese and U.S. students completed a questionnaire that included measures of interpersonal stressors, the behavior inhibition system (BIS), and psychological distress. As hypothesized, frequency of interpersonal friction was higher in Japan than in the United States, whereas frequency of interpersonal conflict did not differ across cultures. BIS partially mediated relationships between culture and frequency of interpersonal friction.
The distinction between relatively independent versus interdependent self-construals has been strongly associated with several important cultural differences in social behavior. The current studies examined the causal role of self-construal by investigating whether priming independent or interdependent self-construals within a culture could result in differences in psychological worldview that mirror those traditionally found between cultures. In Experiment 1, European-American participants primed with interdependence displayed shifts toward more collectivist social values and judgments that were mediated by corresponding shifts in self-construal. In Experiment 2, this effect was extended by priming students from the United States and Hong Kong with primes that were consistent and inconsistent with their predominant cultural worldview. Students who received the inconsistent primes were more strongly affected than those who received the consistent primes, and thus shifted self-construal, and corresponding values, to a greater degree.
Evidence that adverse rearing environments exert negative effects particularly on children presumed “vulnerable” for temperamental or genetic reasons may actually reflect something else: heightened susceptibility to the negative effects of risky environments and to the beneficial effects of supportive environments. Building on Belsky's (1997, 2005) evolutionary-inspired proposition that some children are more affected—both for better and for worse—by their rearing experiences than are others, we consider recent work on child vulnerability, including that involving measured genes, along with evidence showing that putatively vulnerable children are especially susceptible to both positive and negative rearing effects. We also consider methodological issues and unanswered questions in the differential-susceptibility equation.
Research suggests that religiosity, or the importance of religion in one’s life, may be related to well-being, but little is known about how culture and genes may play a role in this relationship. Given that religion in a North American cultural context tends to emphasize social affiliation less than in an East Asian cultural context and that some people may be genetically predisposed to be more socially sensitive than others, the way religion is linked to well-being may depend on the interplay between cultural context and genetic make-up. The current study examined how culture (i.e., European Americans vs. Koreans) and a specific gene polymorphism (i.e., oxytocin receptor polymorphism rs53576) may interact to impact the association between religiosity and psychological well-being. Results showed that among people who were more genetically predisposed toward social sensitivity (i.e., G/G genotype), Koreans had greater psychological well-being if they were more religious; however, European Americans with the G/G genotype had lower psychological well-being if they were more religious. These findings suggest that religion may benefit well-being for those who are genetically predisposed to be socially sensitive but only to the extent that the cultural context provides adequate opportunities for social affiliation.
Research has demonstrated that certain genotypes are expressed phenotypically in different forms depending on the social environment. To examine sensitivity to cultural norms regarding emotion regulation, we explored the expression of the oxytocin receptor polymorphism (OXTR) rs53576, a gene previously related to socioemotional sensitivity, in conjunction with cultural norms. Emotional suppression is normative in East Asian cultures but not in American culture. Consequently, we predicted an interaction of Culture and OXTR in emotional suppression. Korean and American participants completed assessments of emotion regulation and were genotyped for OXTR. We found the predicted interaction: Among Americans, those with the GG genotype reported using emotional suppression less than those with the AA genotype, whereas Koreans showed the opposite pattern. These findings suggest that OXTR rs53576 is sensitive to input from cultural norms regarding emotion regulation. These findings also indicate that culture is a moderator that shapes behavioral outcomes associated with OXTR genotypes.
Three aspects of the self (private, public, collective) with different probabilities in different kinds of social environments were sampled. Three dimensions of cultural variation (individualism–collectivism, tightness–looseness, cultural complexity) are discussed in relation to the sampling of these three aspects of the self. The more complex the culture, the more frequent the sampling of the public and private self and the less frequent the sampling of the collective self. The more individualistic the culture, the more frequent the sampling of the private self and the less frequent the sampling of the collective self. Collectivism, external threat, competition with outgroups, and common fate increase the sampling of the collective self. Cultural homogeneity results in tightness and in the sampling of the collective self. The article outlines theoretical links among aspects of the environment, child-rearing patterns, and cultural patterns, which are linked to differential sampling of aspects of the self. Such sampling has implications for social behavior. Empirical investigations of some of these links are reviewed.
Recent meta-analyses have stimulated an active debate on whether the serotonin transporter gene-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) is associated with an elevated vulnerability to psychiatric diseases upon exposure to environmental adversity. As a potential mechanism explaining genotype-dependent differences in stress sensitivity, altered stress-induced activation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis has been investigated in several experimental studies, with most of these studies comprising small samples. We evaluated the association of 5-HTTLPR genotype and cortisol reactivity to acute psychosocial stress by applying a meta-analytical technique based on eleven relevant data sets (total N=1686), which were identified through a systematic literature search up to October 2011. This meta-analysis indicates a small (d=0.27), but significant association between 5-HTTLPR genotype and HPA-axis reactivity to acute psychosocial stress with homozygous carriers of the S allele displaying increased cortisol reactivity compared with individuals with the S/L and L/L genotype. The latter association was not further moderated by participants' age, sex or the type of stressor. Formal testing revealed no evidence for a substantial selection or publication bias. Our meta-analytical results are consistent with a wide variety of experimental studies indicating a significant association between 5-HTTLPR genotype and intermediate phenotypes related to stress sensitivity. Future studies are needed to clarify the consistency of this effect and to further explore whether altered HPA-axis stress reactivity reflects a potential biological mechanism conveying an elevated risk for the development of stress-related disorders in S allele carriers.Molecular Psychiatry advance online publication, 4 September 2012; doi:10.1038/mp.2012.124.
For more information, go to editor's website : http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?recid=25615 Excerpts available on Google Books.