Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access published online on October 12, 2009
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, doi:10.1093/scan/nsp039
Interdependent self-construal and neural representations of self and mother
1Vanderbilt University, Department of Psychology, Nashville, 37204, 2Johns Hopkins University, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Baltimore, 21218, 3San Francisco State University, Department of Psychology, San Francisco, 94132, 4Stanford University, Department of Psychology, Stanford, 94305, and 5Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Brain & Cognitive Science, Cambridge, 02139
Representations of self are thought to be dynamically influenced by one’s surroundings, including the culture one lives in. However, neuroimaging studies of self-representations have either ignored cultural influences or operationalized culture as country of origin. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the neural correlates of individual differences in interdependent self-construal. Participants rated whether trait adjectives applied to themselves or their mothers, or judged their valence or font. Findings indicated that individual differences in interdependent self-construal correlated positively with increased activation in the medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulated cortex when making judgments about one-self vs making judgments about one’s mother. This suggests that those with greater interdependent self-construals may rely more upon episodic memory, reflected appraisals, or theory of mind to incorporate social information to make judgments about themselves.
Keywords: interdependence; self; culture; fMRI
Correspondence should be addressed to Rebecca D. Ray, Psychology Department, Vanderbilt University, 111 21st Avenue, 204 Wilson Hall, Nashville, TN 37203, USA. E-mail: rebecca.ray{at}vanderbilt.edu
Received March 16, 2009. Accepted August 11, 2009.