Cultural Neuroscience: Biology of the Mind in Cultural Contexts

Abstract

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.

A red queen model of personality

“…For example, allele frequencies can be shown to predict between-population variability in some cultural features (Chiao & Blizinsky, 2010;Luo & Han, 2014), while some non-random changes in gene frequencies reflect differences in personality characteristics between populations as well as trends within populations (Ciani & Capiluppi, 2011). More generally, research converging from a range of sources indicates cultural and genetic change are reciprocally related (Kim & Sasaki, 2014;Laland, Odling-Smee, & Myles, 2010), and these may be interpreted in the framework of the present model.…”

Integrating Culture and Biology in Psychological Research: Conceptual Clarifications and Recommendations

“…The field of cultural neuroscience has enjoyed tremendous growth in recent years (Kim & Sasaki, 2014), riding the broader wave of neuroscience perspectives that are permeating all areas of psychology (Schwartz et al, 2016). In social cognitive neuroscience, however, arguably the biggest threat to reproducibility is under-powered studies (Yarkoni, 2009).…”

“…Psychological research that integrates cultural and biological perspectives has become increasingly prevalent in the last decade (see reviews by Causadias, 2013;Han et al, 2013;Kim & Sasaki, 2014;Mrazek, Harada, & Chiao, 2015). Despite the apparent impressiveness of the scope and methods of this work, psychological research integrating cultural and biological processes remains very much in its infancy.…”

The association between an oxytocin receptor gene polymorphism and cultural orientations

“…The results reported in our study highlight the importance of culture-gene co-evolutionary theory in studying the predictive factors behind human's mental states and social behaviors. Future research should examine other specific genetic polymorphisms that may be associated with different dimensions of cultural values, as well as environment-culture-gene interactions that influence the psychological and neural processes underlying complex human behavior (Chiao and Blizinsky 2010;Chudek and Henrich 2011;Kim and Sasaki 2014).…”