Lecture 4 - Culture and the Self

Question 1

Back in the 80s

Answer 1

The mind was considered a universal data processing machine and so the idea of cultural differences were seen as trivial

Question 2

Ecology, culture & the brain

Answer 2

50000 years ago, modern humans left Africa
10000 years ago, began agriculture and lost their previous knowledge

Wheat spread all over the Eurasian continent except in the east where it was too hot and humid. Rice was cultured here.

Wheat farming:
can be done individually
Less labor intensive

Rice:
labor intensive
requires irrigation
need to have access to neighbors water, must be part of the tribe

Could have had an influence on culture as rice farming forces people to work together.

Question 3

Source of happiness

Answer 3

West - personal achievement based
East - social harmony based

Correlates of happiness are very different across cultures

Question 4

Motivation

Answer 4

In the west, when you feel you made a choice you are likely to report being motivated

In Japan, you do not see this because in the study they were alone. Interdependent people are not motivated if this is in a vacuum.

However, when there is social context, westerners are less motivated but Asians more so.

Question 5

Attention

Answer 5

Focused attention in the west

Holistic in the east

(this is changing fast in China now)

Question 6

Thought

Answer 6

West - analytic, focused on semantic aspects of thought
i.e. this is the right course of action

East - holistic, focused on didactic
i.e. I am right, so are you

Question 7

Wheat and rice areas in China

Answer 7

Northern area has rice, southern has wheat
Divorce rates are higher in the south (used as a surrogate for individualism)
Cog style is different between the two places, it is analytic in the south and relational in the north

Question 8

Systemic effects on voluntary movement (2 things)

Answer 8

Northern Island in Japan
Not settled for ages
Samui that needed homes and peasants moved there
Sig differences between north and Japanese mainland
Much more independent on this island

Travelers going to western frontier states. As you go east to west, the choice of names changes from traditional to individual and unique.
Could be a surrogate for individualism

Question 9

Mechanisms of cultural influence

2 things and how they influence

Answer 9

Mimicry of others
Conformity to others behaviors and expectations
Reinforcement of these behaviors and all the neural networks recruited to produce them
All these are reinforced together (fire - wires)
Culture is a set of tasks

Question 10

Cultural tasks

Answer 10

Independence tasks
Self promotion
Self adulation
Freedom and autonomy
All are prefrontal tasks 

Interdependence tasks
Self sacrifice
Obligation and delay
Social harmony
Downregulation of the PFC

Question 11

Brain regions implemented in individualistic ideas

Answer 11

Orbitofrontal cortex (OPC)
medial PFC (mPFC)

Question 12

Interdependence is associated with

Answer 12

decreased volume of PFC
135 Japanese adults show this in MRI scans
|Voxel based morphology
Questionnaires measuring independent and interdependent thought
OFC mass linked to independence

Question 13

Comparing American and Han Chinese brains

Answer 13

Diverse areas show consistent differences
INCLUDES OFC and mPFC

Replicated at Michigan with Asian vs European Americans. Differences in OFC and mPFC

Question 14

Pathway these brain composition differences might have occurred

Answer 14

Ecology - Cultural norms - ? - Neurological differences

^ might be epigenetics

Question 15

DDR4

Answer 15

is a dopamie receptor
Has many variants
2R and 7R are much better
These facilitate better dopaminergic signaling
2R appeared 20000 years ago
Linked with increased reward signaling
Studies show these variants function as plasticity alleles
If the differences are due to cultural learning, this should be increased in the people that have 2R 7R DDR4 alleles

Question 16

DDR4 allele evidence

Answer 16

Caucasian Americans have more PFC volume than Asians
This is more pronounced when they have the 2r or 7r allele

Asian born Asians who move to the USA show increased PFC volume once they get there
This is more pronounced in 2r7r carriers
No effect for non-carriers
BUT all these people were young and so this is confounded by when they came. Perhaps there would be more if they came younger. Would Americans show less if they moved to China?

Question 17

Culture is

Answer 17

A loosely organized complex of values, beliefs and practices

A significant shaper of the self (or agency) as well as the cognitive, emotional and motivational processes that constitute the self

Question 18

Wester and Eastern cultures

Answer 18

Western
Independence
Attend to self, self-assertion and uniqueness
Distinguish the self from others
Personal identity (traits)
Self-interests and personal happiness
Less holistic attention

Eastern
Interdependence
Attend to groups, fit in, , facilitate group harmony
Self WITH OTHERS
Collective identity (social roles and relationships)
Social happiness, the suspension of self-interest
Holistic attention

Question 19

Congnition and culture

Answer 19

NA
Focus on objects
Objects exist independent of context and each has their own attributes
Rules are used to explain things and make predictions

Asian
Holistic thinking
Focus on the context as a whole and associations
Attend to relationships among objects and context
Relationships used to explain and make predictions

Question 20

Examples of cognition

Answer 20

(1) Categorization
Asked what a cow goes with, chicken or grass
NA: Chicken cos its a family - rule
EA: Grass cos its a relationship/context

Flower sorting task
Put a target object into a group, uses either rule based or family based approach

Overwhelming European Americans choose rule based strategies, Asians use family and Asian Americans use half way between the two

(2) Field Dependence

In tasks where the vertical orientation of a rod in a frame needed to be identified and the frames orientation could be changed, Asians did worse (more focus on context)

Asians do worse in tasks when they have to find figures embedded in other structures (see the whole object, not the relevant part)

Same with Muller-Lyer (line length with arrow head) illusions

In tasks where fish are seen with a background, then a fish is shown with this original background, no background and a different one and the participants are asked if they recognize it, WA are field dependent and make more mistakes on the recall test (they see the item in the context).

Question 21

Examples of cognition - Change and stability

Answer 21

When given growth and decline curves then asked to predict what would happen next, Chinese people were more likely to say a trend stops or reverses vs an American

Question 22

Implicit theories of personality

Entity & Incremental

Answer 22

Entity
Attributes seen as fixed
Traits/abilities are ascribed
Diagnosed at one time unchanging
Predict behavior at another time (see them act one way once, can predict later)

Incremental
Attributes are Malleable (and can be acquired or improved)
Traits/Abilities are achieved
Understanding the dynamics of behavior (behavior changes so cannot always predict)
Weaker trait inferences

Why do some people stick out stuff in the face of failure and others not

People with an entity approach to intelligence give up as they do not feel they can get smarter/better

Fixed view people avoid situations which might result in their views on their intelligence being challenged (or failing)

Question 23

FAE and culture (Idea)

Answer 23

Who/what is the causal agent?

NA
Independence
Individual is free agent

EA
Interdependence
Individual is constrained by the group and therefore less agentic than the social collective

Question 24

FAE and culture (evidence)

Answer 24

Study 1
Analyzed articles about rouge trader scandals in NA
Calculated the number of references to individuals and organizations in western and eastern publications
Eastern papers blamed the collective (organization)
Western, the individual

Study 2
Story about a bull attacking something
Study of a herd attacking something

American students identified the bull as the agent (herds not considered as free agents)
Chinese students
Less likely to attribute the blame to a bull
Much more likely to the herd

Question 25

Culture and cognition recap

Answer 25

Big differences between west and east in
Categorization
Causal attribution
Reliance on rules
Use of logic

These are due to perception, what is attended to

Attn to focal objects vs field encourages categorization of object, applying rules to object, seeing it as the casual agent

Attn to field encourages noticing relationships and change, prompts causal attributes in terms of context and makes segregation different

Question 26

Cultural effects on choice

Pen
Middle/Working class

Answer 26

Choose a pen of a gift
USA - ppl choose the rarest color
Koreans chose the most common color
NA children prefer tasks chosen by the self
Asian children prefer tasks chosen by the ingroup or itself

This is the same when working class Americans are surveyed
Ingroup member or self
More interdependent

Question 27

Cultural differences in social psychological phenomena

Answer 27

Self-perceptions (traits & attributes vs. social roles and relationships)
• Attribution styles
• Perceptions of agency
• Fundamental attribution error
• Entity vs. incremental theories of personality
• Conformity (motivation to fit in/stand out)
• Approach vs. avoidance motivation
• Making choices
• Finally, need for (high) self-esteem, self-enhancement (large effect:
d=0.84)

Question 28

Cultural differences in parenting (2 Examples)

Answer 28

Sleeping
100 countries surveyed
Only American's put their children in another room to sleep
2/3 slept in the same bed
Encourages individualism

• North American mothers also speak differently to babies:
• Objects vs. relationship between objects
• “see the truck; it has nice wheels” vs. “when you throw the truck, the wall says ouch!”
• nouns > verbs

Question 29

Ecology

Answer 29

• Different ecological environments – that are tied to survival – pull for
more independent vs. interdependent social outlooks
• Environment creates a social structure that (re)inforces individualism
vs. collectivism…
• Also, voluntary settlement: certain kinds of individuals are drawn to
certain environments, and create cultures that reinforce social
orientation

Question 30

Culture shapes the anatomy of the self-representation (what is included in the self-structure) experiment

Answer 30

Use the self-judgement task where RT determins integration or not into self-concept
If it is part of the self-concept, you will be slower. Thi sis the self-reference task.
Do for words you sort into self, mother and another and a group (font)
Do this with westerners and East Asians
For both groups:
RT is less in self than other
RT is less in self than font

For Westerners: Self

Question 31

Culture shapes the anatomy of the self-representation (what is included in the self-structure) Conclusion

Answer 31

Culture shapes functional anatomy of self-representation (Zhu et al 2007)
• “Finding the Self”
• MPFC activity stronger for self vs. other judgments—involved in
representation of self-knowledge
• North Americans and Chinese show greater MPFC active for self (vs.
other) judgments
• Chinese–but not North Americans–also show MPFC activity for
intimate other (mother) vs. other judgments
• MPFC locus of self judgments for all but Chinese use MPFC to represent self
and mother
• Culture creates habitual ways of processing information about oneself— cognitive processes accompanied by detectible neural processes

Question 32

Culture and the brain

Answer 32

How deep does culture go?
• Grey matter (GM) volume in OFC and mPFC: European Americans > East Asians
• GM volume in OFC and mPFC both negatively related to interdependent self- construal (2 studies)
• Less interdependent individuals may be more likely to engage in activities that recruit these pre-frontal regions:
• OFC: value based judgments (“what do I like?”)
• mPFC: clear personal (vs. collective) self
• Also, more interdependent individuals may be more likely to engage in tasks that
inhibit activity in these regions (sacrifice)
• Culturally sanctioned chronic recruitment of OFC and mPFC may explain
associations
• Positive reinforcement increases activity in these brain regions, which, overtime
results in gradual expansion of GM volume
• Independent: prioritize personal goals
• Interdependent: prioritize group goals & relational concerns
• Latter requires perspective taking
• Perspective taking
• East Asians > North Americans (Cohen & Gunz, 2002)
• Temporal parietal junction (TPJ) involved in self-other distinction and perspective taking
• TPJ GM volume: East Asians > North Americans
• Again, moderation by DRD4
7/2r carriers show the most changes in grey matter as a function of culture

Question 33

Culture and the brain Summary

Answer 33

• Cultural differences in social orientation
• How do these differences come about?
• Experience
• Ecology
• Early development and parenting
• Culture provides us with opportunities to learn and manifest cultural norms and values
• Opportunities (tasks) lead to differences in how we see ourselves, what we
attend to and how we think about our experience, what motivates us, and
what makes us happy
• Differences are also manifested in brain function and structure, because
the brain is plastic and responds to environmental inputs

Question 34

Changes in social orientation recently

Answer 34

Changes in social orientation (Kitayama et al. 2020)
• East Asians: interdependent > independent
• North Americans: interdependent = independent
America might have changed somewhat
• Interdependence: EA > NA
• Independence: EA = NA
China may have changed somewhat

Showing different patterns of social orientation
• Again, DRD4 polymorphism moderates effect (most strong for 7/2 Rs)
• Interestingly, there is a positive association between years spent in US and OFC Grey Matter volume for East Asians carriers