Culture and biology interplay: An introduction

Culture and biology have evolved together, influence each other, and concurrently shape behavior, affect, cognition, and development. This special section highlights 2 major domains of the interplay between culture and biology.

The first domain is neurobiology of cultural experiences-how cultural, ethnic, and racial experiences influence limbic systems and neuroendocrine functioning-and the second domain is cultural neuroscience-the connections between cultural processes and brain functioning.

We include 3 studies on neurobiology of cultural experiences that examine the associations between racial discrimination and heart rate variability (Hill et al., 2016), economic and sociocultural stressors and cortisol levels (Mendoza, Dmitrieva, Perreira, & Watamura, 2016), and unfair treatment and allostatic load (Ong, Williams, Nwizu, & Gruenewald, 2016). We also include 2 studies on cultural neuroscience that investigate cultural group differences and similarities in beliefs, practices, and neural basis of emotion regulation (Qu & Telzer, 2016), and reflected and direct self-appraisals (Pfeifer et al., 2016).

We discuss pending challenges and future directions for this emerging field. (PsycINFO Database Record