Cultural Neuroscience of Emotion: Toward a Developmental Framework

Over the last several decades, theoretical and methodological advances in the fields of neuroscience, psychophysiology, and molecular genetics have extended into the study of cross-cultural differences in emotion. These advances have accompanied a rise in the use of biological methods and measures to examine cross-cultural differences of emotion particularly in studies of children. The findings from existing studies using these methods and measures are mixed and inconsistent, across a range of emotion phenotypes. In the present article, we argue that current biocultural models of emotion are limited in their explanatory power to account for differences because they neglect the importance of developmental processes. Here we review the extant literature on cultural studies that have used biological measures with a particular focus on shyness, aggression, and interpersonal processes of emotion. We then propose a revised biocultural model of emotion that attempts to account for developmental processes that we believe has explanatory power to reconcile some of the inconsistencies in the extant literature. We suggest this revised model as a preliminary framework to derive testable hypotheses to guide future studies in the area.