How culture gets embrained: Cultural differences in event-related potentials of social norm violations
Abstract
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.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Nov 30, 2015
- Source ID
- 10.1073/pnas.1509839112
Entities
People
- Michele J. Gelfand
- Shihui Han
- Shinobu Kitayama
- Yan Mu
Organizations
- United States Department of Defense
- University of Maryland
- University of Michigan