Culture permeates across human mind and behavior. Cultural influence is reported even in economic decision making, which involves basic cognitive process, once believed to be invariant across all humans. The current study investigated the neurocognitive processes underlying economic decision making in East Asians and European Americans, with an aim to understand the cross-cultural differences in the discrete mental processes of decision making. Participants performed a risky gambling task that captures the gain maximizing and loss minimizing strategies, while electroencephalography was simultaneously collected. Event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with spontaneous emotional arousal (P2) and effortful attentional allocation (P3) were examined to determine the cultural effects on mental processes during pre-decisional and post-decisional stages. Behaviorally, Americans showed greater loss minimization than Asians. ERPs demonstrated significant cultural differences during post-decisional evaluation of outcomes, but not during pre-decisional processes. In Asians’, ERP associated with emotional arousal (P2) was strongly modulated by gains, while in Americans’, ERP associated with attentional allocation (P3) was strongly modulated by losses. These results suggest that Americans make conscious efforts to be self-reliant when facing financial losses, whereas Asians are more emotionally aroused by financial gains, which invites a refinement to the current theoretical propositions about cultural influence on decision making.

中文翻译：

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风险决策中跨文化差异的神经认知基础。

文化渗透到人类的思想和行为中。文化影响甚至在经济决策中也有报道，这涉及基本的认知过程，曾经被认为对所有人类来说都是不变的。目前的研究调查了东亚人和欧洲裔美国人经济决策背后的神经认知过程，旨在了解决策的离散心理过程中的跨文化差异。参与者执行一项有风险的赌博任务，捕捉收益最大化和损失最小化策略，同时收集脑电图。检查与自发情绪唤醒（P2）和努力注意力分配（P3）相关的事件相关电位（ERP），以确定文化对决策前和决策后阶段心理过程的影响。从行为上看，美国人比亚洲人表现出更大的损失最小化能力。ERP 在决策后评估结果期间表现出显着的文化差异，但在决策前过程中则不然。在亚洲人中，与情绪唤起（P2）相关的 ERP 受到增益的强烈调节，而在美国人中，与注意力分配（P3）相关的 ERP 受到损失的强烈调节。这些结果表明，美国人在面临经济损失时会有意识地努力自力更生，而亚洲人则更容易因经济收益而情绪激动，这需要对当前有关文化对决策影响的理论命题进行完善。