CCC seminar, Monday March 1st, 15.00: "Neural Basis of Cultural Influence on Self Construals"
Professor Shihui Han, Institute of Psychology, Beijing University:
I'll present some of our recent brain imaging studies that investigated cultural differences in self-construals. Basically, we imaged participants from Western and Chinese cultures or primed bicultural participants using Western and Chinese cultural symbols. We examined whether brain areas such as the medial prefrontal cortex involved in self trait judgment activate differently to the self and close others between participants from different cultures. Our brain imaging findings suggest that Chinese use the same neural structure (e.g., the medial prefrontal cortex) to represent the self and close others whereas English speaking Westerners use the same brain area to represent only the self. Our findings provide neural basis for understanding the cultural independent/interdependent differences in psychological structure of self-concept.
Shihui is a key figure in the culture, cognition and the brain field, with a number of key publications to his name. He is in Aarhus a few days to develop collaborations with us as part of the Sino-Danish university initiative. You can find more about his group and work at http://www.psy.pku.edu.cn/LABS/CSCN_lab/people.html.