Cultures differ in the ability to enhance affective neural responses

Cultures differ in the ability to enhance affective neural responses. Michael Varnum & Ryan Hampton. Social Neuroscience, September/October 2017, Pages 594-603, www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17470919.2016.1209239

Abstract: The present study (N = 55) used an event-related potential paradigm to investigate whether cultures differ in the ability to upregulate affective responses. Using stimuli selected from the International Affective Picture System, we found that European-Americans (N = 29) enhanced central-parietal late positive potential (LPP) (400–800 ms post-stimulus) responses to affective stimuli when instructed to do so, whereas East Asians (N = 26) did not. We observed cultural differences in the ability to enhance central-parietal LPP responses for both positively and negatively valenced stimuli, and the ability to enhance these two types of responses was positively correlated for Americans but negatively for East Asians. These results are consistent with the notion that cultural variations in norms and values regarding affective expression and experiences shape how the brain regulates emotions.

KEYWORDS: Culture, emotion regulation, cultural neuroscience, ERP, LPP