Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2020 Jul 30;15(6):671-680. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsaa078.
Culture permeates across human mind and behavior. Cultural influence is reported even in economic decision making, which involves basic cognitive process, once believed to be invariant across all humans. The current study investigated the neurocognitive processes underlying economic decision making in East Asians and European Americans, with an aim to understand the cross-cultural differences in the discrete mental processes of decision making. Participants performed a risky gambling task that captures the gain maximizing and loss minimizing strategies, while electroencephalography was simultaneously collected. Event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with spontaneous emotional arousal (P2) and effortful attentional allocation (P3) were examined to determine the cultural effects on mental processes during pre-decisional and post-decisional stages. Behaviorally, Americans showed greater loss minimization than Asians. ERPs demonstrated significant cultural differences during post-decisional evaluation of outcomes, but not during pre-decisional processes. In Asians', ERP associated with emotional arousal (P2) was strongly modulated by gains, while in Americans', ERP associated with attentional allocation (P3) was strongly modulated by losses. These results suggest that Americans make conscious efforts to be self-reliant when facing financial losses, whereas Asians are more emotionally aroused by financial gains, which invites a refinement to the current theoretical propositions about cultural influence on decision making.
文化渗透到人类的思想和行为中。即使在涉及基本认知过程的经济决策中，也有报道称存在文化影响，而这些基本认知过程被认为是全人类普遍存在的。本研究旨在探讨东亚人和欧洲裔美国人在经济决策中的神经认知过程，以了解决策这一离散心理过程中的跨文化差异。参与者进行了一项风险赌博任务，该任务可以捕捉到收益最大化和损失最小化的策略，同时同步采集脑电图。研究考察了与自发情绪唤醒（P2）和努力注意力分配（P3）相关的事件相关电位（ERP），以确定在决策前和决策后阶段心理过程的文化影响。行为上，美国人的损失最小化程度大于亚洲人。ERP 在结果的决策后评估中表现出显著的文化差异，但在决策前过程中没有。在亚洲人的研究中，与情绪唤醒（P2）相关的 ERP 强烈受到收益的调节，而在美国人的研究中，与注意力分配（P3）相关的 ERP 强烈受到损失的调节。这些结果表明，美国人在面对财务损失时会有意识地努力自力更生，而亚洲人则更容易因财务收益而感到情绪激动，这需要对关于文化对决策影响的现有理论命题进行修正。
