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Within the emerging field of cultural neuroscience (CN) one branch of research focuses on the neural underpinnings of “individualistic/Western” vs. “collectivistic/Eastern” self-views. These studies uncritically adopt essentialist assumptions from classic cross-cultural research, mainly following the tradition of Markus and Kitayama (1991), into the domain of functional neuroimaging. In this perspective article we analyze recent publications and conference proceedings of the 18th Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (2012) and problematize the essentialist and simplistic understanding of “culture” in these studies. Further, we argue against the binary structure of the drawn “cultural” comparisons and their underlying Eurocentrism. Finally we scrutinize whether valuations within the constructed binarities bear the risk of constructing and reproducing a postcolonial, orientalist argumentation pattern.
In this article, we hypothesize, and then demonstrate, that experiences of embarrassment have significantly increased in the United States, due in part, to the current situation in American politics under President Donald Trump. We provide support for our hypothesis by conducting both qualitative and quantitative analyses of Twitter posts in the U.S. obtained from the Crimson Hexagon database. Next, based on literature from social psychology, social neuroscience, and political theory, we propose a two-step process explaining why Trump's behavior has caused people in the U.S. to feel more embarrassment. First, compared to former representatives, Trump violates social norms in a manner that seems intentional, and second, these intentional norm violations specifically threaten the social integrity of in-group members—in this case, U.S. citizens. We discuss how these norm violations relate to the behavior of currently represented citizens and contextualize our rationale in recent changes of political representation and the public sphere. We conclude by proposing that more frequent, nation-wide experiences of embarrassment on behalf of the representative may motivate political actions to prevent further harm to individuals' self-concepts and protect social integrity.
Ten years ago, neuroscientists began to study cultural phenomena by using functional MRI. Since then the number of publications in this field, termed cultural neuroscience (CN), has tremendously increased. In these studies, particular concepts of culture are implied, but rarely explicitly discussed. We argue that it is necessary to make these concepts a topic of debate in order to unravel the foundations of CN. From 40 fMRI studies we extracted two strands of reasoning: models investigating universal mechanisms for the formation of cultural groups and habits and, models assessing differences in characteristics among cultural groups. Both strands simplify culture as an inflexible set of traits and specificities. We question this rigid understanding of culture and highlight its hidden evaluative nature.
Within the last year, expressions of second-hand embarrassment on Twitter significantly increased. We show how this relates to the current situation in U.S. politics under Trump and provide two explanations for why people feel this way in response to his actions. First, compared to former politicians, Trump’s norm violations seem intentional. Second, intentional norm violations specifically threaten the social integrity of in-group members—in this case, U.S citizens. We theorize that these strong, frequent and widespread feelings of second-hand embarrassment motivate political actions to prevent further harm to individuals’ self-concept and protect their social integrity.