ambady and freeman : the cultural neuroscience of human perception 777 67 The Cultural Neuroscience of Human Perception

Culture and the brain were once thought of as mutually exclusive views on behavioral variation—an idea that is changing with the emerging field of cultural neuroscience. In this chapter, we discuss recent research examining the interplay of cultural and genetic factors on the neural bases of human perception. We conclude that cultural experience readily impacts basic mechanisms underlying perception, ranging from lower-level nonsocial domains (e.g., attentional deployment and object perception) to higher-order social domains (e.g., emotion recognition and theory of mind). More broadly, we discuss the promise and pitfalls of a cultural neuroscience approach to psychological processes and explain how this multilevel approach can contribute to both cognitive neuroscience as well as to social and cultural psychology. The cultural neuroscience of human perception Humans are biological systems embedded in larger social systems. We see, think, and act in the context of others. We exist in cultural environments in which specific meanings, practices, and institutions organize our perceptual, cognitive, and behavioral tendencies. In spite of this fact, culture and the brain were once thought of as mutually exclusive views on variation in behavior and were subjects of study divided by relatively strict divisions across the natural and social sciences. Although it is clear now that culture and social experience may readily shape brain function, this was not always the case. Even with respect to more general, nonsocial experience, the broader field of cognitive neuroscience early on was surprised by such influences on the brain. In the early 1990s, Posner ( 1993 , p. 674) remarked in Science : “If the neural systems used for a given task can change with 15 minutes of practice . how can we any longer separate organic structures from their experience in the organism ’ s history? ” The answer, we now know, is simply that we cannot. Recent research examining the neural mechanisms underlying the effects of cultural experience on the brain and, conversely, examining how the brain gives rise to cultural experience has led to the emergence of a new field: cultural neuroscience (Ambady & Bharucha, 2009 ; Chiao & Ambady, 2007 ; Han & Northoff, 2008 ; Han et al., 2013 ; Kitayama & Park, 2010 ). Accumulating evidence for neuroplasticity and the coextension of culture and the brain has made clear that cultural and neural processes are not inherently distinct objects of inquiry; instead, they may richly interact. A complete and accurate understanding of behavioral variation requires the comprehensive study of these tandem processes. Arguably, the human brain evolved to permit elaborate social behavior, particularly so that such behavior may be adapted to the social structures and patterns in which individuals find themselves. Cultural neuroscience is centered around the assumption of a bidirectional relationship between culture and the brain: the brain adapts to cultural processes, and cultural processes adapt to neural constraints (Ambady & Bharucha, 2009 ). As such, this burgeoning field aims to provide a fuller understanding of psychological phenomena at multiple levels of analysis.