Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, USA.
Neuroimage. 2011 Jul 15;57(2):642-50. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.04.031. Epub 2011 Apr 29.
Cultures vary in the extent to which people prefer social hierarchical or egalitarian relations between individuals and groups. Here we examined the effect of cultural variation in preference for social hierarchy on the neural basis of intergroup empathy. Using cross-cultural neuroimaging, we measured neural responses while Korean and American participants observed scenes of racial ingroup and outgroup members in emotional pain. Compared to Caucasian-American participants, Korean participants reported experiencing greater empathy and elicited stronger activity in the left temporo-parietal junction (L-TPJ), a region previously associated with mental state inference, for ingroup compared to outgroup members. Furthermore, preferential reactivity within this region to the pain of ingroup relative to outgroup members was associated with greater preference for social hierarchy and ingroup biases in empathy. Together, these results suggest that cultural variation in preference for social hierarchy leads to cultural variation in ingroup-preferences in empathy, due to increased engagement of brain regions associated with representing and inferring the mental states of others.
文化在个人和群体之间偏好社会等级关系还是平等关系方面存在差异。在这里，我们研究了对社会等级的偏好的文化差异对群体间同理心的神经基础的影响。使用跨文化神经影像学，我们在韩国和美国参与者观察到种族内群体和外群体成员处于情绪痛苦中的场景时，测量了他们的神经反应。与白种美国人相比，韩国参与者报告说，他们对同组成员的同理心更强，对左颞顶联合区（L-TPJ）的活动更强，该区域先前与心理状态推断有关，而对同组成员的同理心比对外组成员更强。此外，该区域对同组成员疼痛的反应与对社会等级的偏好以及同理心的内群体偏见呈正相关。总的来说，这些结果表明，对社会等级的偏好的文化差异导致了同理心中对内群体偏好的文化差异，这是由于与代表和推断他人心理状态相关的大脑区域的参与度增加所致。
