Cultural Neuroscience

The existence of human diversity has been a cultural variation in human thought and acsource of contemplation and curiosity since the tion. The mutual constitution of culture and beginning of human history. In his encyclopemind has been demonstrated in a variety of dia Etymologiae, published in the seventh cenfundamental psychological processes, includtury, Isidori of Seville observed that diversity ing the way people conceive of the self (Markus among humans existed not only in their ap& Kitayama, 1991; Markus, Kitayama, & pearance, such as color or body size, but also in Heiman, 1996), how they make causal attributhe content of their minds (Jahoda, 2002). Phitions (Morris 8i: Peng, 1994), how they attend losophers, such as Descartes and Locke, conto and remember objects in their environment tinued speculation on the nature and origin of (Miyanioto & Kitayama, 2002; Kitayama, human diversity, introducing more formalized Duffy, Kawamura, & Larsen, 2003; Masuda & notions of culture and its relation to human naNisbett, 2001), and how they perceive, experiture into the lexicon. The study of culture and ence, respond to, and predict their own and its role in humanity gained further prominence others' emotions (Elfenhein & Ambady, 2002; with the emergence of the field of anthropology Lam, Ruehler, McFarland, Ross, & Cheung, in the late 19th century, which emphasized the 2005; Mesquita & Frijda, 1992). A fundarnenstudy of cultural variation through observation tal assumption of this research is that the huof the customs, practices, values, and beliefs of man mind is intimately linked with its social different cultural groups, and later with the world or cu l t~~ra l context, and that culture is field of cultural psychology, which sought to continuously created through the actions and apply the methodology of psychology and its products of the individual minds that comprise emphasis on the individual mind to the study of it. cultural variation. Cultural psychologists have been wary, howContemporary cultural psychologists have ever, about integrating biological perspectives made considerable progress in documenting into their research endeavors, perhaps because