This is not because it implies the questionable existence of a homogeneous, perfectly self-consistent Western or Chinese self. In fact, the study itself reports that in Asian American individuals, who have multiple cultural identities, brain response patterns depend on which “cultural frame” is made salient (10), but it does not establish that this cannot happen in allegedly monocultural persons. The inference is fallacious because the nature of a self cannot be inferred or even hypothesized from the existence of certain “neural connections.” However, such an inference exhibits the ultimate implicit goal of much neurodisciplinary research: to diagnose and classify on the basis of brain data, thus saving the trouble of engaging in apparently messier and less objective human science research.
Shinobu Kitayama, PhD, is the Robert B. Zajonc Collegiate Professor of Psychology and director of th...
Sarah Huff is a Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology at Amherst Colleg...
Inspired by the homonymous book by Fernando Vidal and Francisco Ortega, this timespace presents the authors' genealogy of the cerebral subject and the influence of the neurological discourse in human sciences, mental health and culture.
