Abstract
As a developmental psychologist, I have always been aware of the long-standing nature–nurture controversy that attempts to compare the roles of culture and biology to determine which has greater influence in the process of development. For many years, the pendulum swung toward genetic and biological effects with the “central dogma” of molecular biology asserting a unidirectional view of development in which genes serve as a set of predetermined instructions that shape the organism and its behavior (Crick, 1958). Environment really had little influence on the course of development.
In the 1970s, the role of nature, or environment and culture, began to gain ground. Although researchers had always paid lip service to the “interaction” of nature and nurture, the effects were seen as making identifiably separate contributions to the phenotypic outcomes of development. They were considered to be much like two independent variables in an analysis of variance model—separate variables that simply moderated the role of the other. Challenges to this unidirectional predeterministic model began to mount when researchers began finding normally occurring environmental influences on genetic activity. Organisms with identical genes were shown to develop very different phenotypes (Tanner, 1978; Wigglesworth, 1964).
As a result, while I was in graduate school studying with Gilbert Gottlieb, I saw views of development move toward a probabilistic epigenetic model (Gottlieb, 1998). The sequence and outcomes of development were considered to be probabilistically determined by the co-action of both endogenous and exogenous stimulative events. There was reciprocity of influences within and between all levels of the developmental manifold (i.e., genetic activity, neural activity, behavior, and the physical, social, and cultural influences of the external environment; Gottlieb, 2007). I was delighted to see the door open for the role of culture to be examined within the context of cognitive, social, and biological development. As new methodologies evolved in genetics and brain imaging, neuroscience began to examine how cultural practices, beliefs, and cognition shape and are shaped by genes, neural activity, and biological processes—the interaction of neurobiology and culture.
Given the exponential growth in research dealing with the intersection of neuroscience and culture, I invited Joni Sasaki and Heejung Kim to review this growing area and to share their views of the field with readers of the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. They review neuroscience research, theories, and methodologies and highlight the central role of culture. They offer a rich understanding of the current state of intersection of neuroscience and culture as well as the future paths for the field.