Culture, self, and medial prefrontal cortex

Culture, self, and medial prefrontal cortex

Ying Zhu(Department of Psychology, Peking University)

May, 2007

The cover picture of Journal of cognitive neuroscience 2002

AbstractHow to understand the interaction among 3 factors: culture, self, and

medial prefrontal cortex?

How do cultural factors influence neural basis of self-representation?

1.“People in different cultures have strikingly different construals of

the self.” (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).

2.“If the self is different, all process that implicate the self should

take different forms.” (Markus & Kitayama, 2003).

3.If the self-processing is different, the neural activation of self

should take different forms.

Fig.1 Two construals of mental self (Markus & Kitayama,1991).

Self as cultural product : Cultural differences in self-construal(1)

Self as cultural product : Cultural differences in self-construal(2)

Independent (or unconnected) self-construal in

western cultures emphasizes separation of the

self from others; in contrast, interdependent (or

connected) self-construal in East Asian cultures

emphasizes the fundamental connectedness of

human being to each other.

Cultural differences in information processing related to self (1)

“If the self is different, all processes that implicate the self should take different forms” (Markus & Kitayama, 2003).


Independent selves are often attended to self-

focused information and attended to the self more

than they do to others including intimate others such

as mother, which result in a better memory of

information about the self (Markus & Kitayama,

1991; Conway et al., 2005;Chi-Yue Chiu & Ying-Yi

Hong,2006).


Klein et al. (1989) and Heatherton et al. (2006)

have shown that in westerners, the using of

descriptive tasks for making judgments about

well-known others (e.g., “Does this trait describe

your mother/best friend?”) has produced

memory performance inferior to that found with

self-reference.


Table 1 Recognition ratio in tasks for American*

Task Hits-false alarms

Self .62 (.04)

Best friend .53 (.03)

Case .21 (.05)

* Reprinted with permission from

Heatherton et al, 2006.


Interdependent selves, in contrast, are generally sensitive to

information related to significant others and attended to

intimate others such as mother as much as they do to the self,

which result in a better memory of information about the

collective self (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Conway et al.,

2005;Chi-Yue Chiu & Ying-Yi Hong,2006).


Table 2 Remember and Know responses in tasks for Chinese

Zhu et al. (2002) and Zhang

et al. (2002) have shown

that in Chinese participants,

well-known other-reference

(mother/father/best friend-

reference) is comparable to

self-reference in memory

performance.

Old item

task R K

Self .61 .19

Mother .60 .19

Lu Xun*

.45 .31

Semantic

.52 .28* A Chinese writer.

Self is correlated with MPFC

Self-referential processing

yielded activations of

MPFC. That is, the

memory advantage of self-

reference is correlated

with activation of MPFC

(reprinted with permission

from Northoff et al., 2006)

Self is correlated with MPFC

For Chinese, If self-reference is correlated with activation of

MPFC and mother-reference is comparable to self-reference, then

mother-reference will also yielded activation of MPFC.

mother-reference is comparable to self-reference, so the mother-

reference will yield activations of MPFC; For Westerners, in

contrast, mother-reference is inferior to self-reference, so the

mother-reference will not yield activations of MPFC. This cultural

differences in self-reference effect is the basis for finding the

cultural differences in MPFC. Zhu et al. (2007) have found the

cultural differences in MPFC in a fMRI study using both Chinese

and Westerners as subjects.

Fig.2 Schema of the design of one scan (Ying Zhu et al., 2007).

Cultural differences in MPFC (1)

Fig.3 MPFC activity

associated with mother-

judgment was increased

for Chinese but decreased

for Westerners (Zhu,

Zhang, Fan & Han, 2007).

Cultural differences in MPFC (2)

Fig.4 Self-reference yielded MPFC activations but friend-reference decreased MPFC activations. (Reprinted with permission from Heatherton et al.2006).

For westerners, best friend-reference is inferior to self-reference in memory

performance, so the friend-reference will not yield activations of MPFC.

Heatherton et al. (2006) have confirmed this.

Abstract

1.“People in different cultures have strikingly different

construals of the self.” (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).

2.“If the self is different, all process that implicate the

self should take different forms.” (Markus & Kitayama,

2003).

3.If the self-processing is different, the neural activation

of self should take different forms.

Conclusion (Summary of present position)

We believe that the differences in information processing

related to self, activations of MPFC related to self that we

have shown are driven by differences in self-construal.

That is, there is a causal chain running from culture

( self-construal) to information processing related to self

(self-reference effect) to activations of MPFC related to

self.

This conclusion was reinforced by self-construal priming

study.

Self-construal priming study(1)

Researchers have used an self-construal priming procedure to activate either the independent self or the interdependent self for the same Western person in a controlled experiment and they found that interdependent (vs. independent) self-construal priming has a temporary effect on the way participants process information (Gardner et al., 1999;Chi-Yue Chiu & Ying-Yi Hong,2006,148-152).


Jie Sui and Shihui Han(2007) used fMRI to assess if self-construal priming can change self-awareness induced during face perception in adults. Chinese participants were scanned while judging head orientations of the self or a familiar face after reading essays containing independent or interdependent pronouns (e.g.,”I” or “We”).


Jie Sui & Shihui Han(2007) found that the neural activity in the right middle frontal cortex was increased to the self than familiar faces, which was consistent with the current theory about self-face recognition (Keenan et al.,2000),the right frontal activity differentiating between the self and familiar faces was enlarged by the independent relative to interdependent self- construal priming.

Conclusion (Final remarks)

Cultural neuroscience says that ,not only does

the brain control cognition and socio-cultural

interactions, but it also works the other way

round: Culture also shapes and modifies brain

structure and function (Shu-Chen Li,2003; Wexler,2006;

Chiao & Ambady,2007).

Thanks to:Li Zhang, Jie Sui & Shihui Han(Department of Psychology, Peking University)

Jin Fan

(Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York)

Chi-Yue Chiu & Ying-yi Hong(Psychology, University of Illinois)

Nalini Ambady (Psychology, Tufts University)

Thank You!

Culture, self, and medial prefrontal cortex

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