Language access differentially alters functional connectivity during emotion perception across cultures

Joseph Leshin; Maleah J Carter; Cameron M Doyle; Kristen A Lindquist

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1084059

Language access differentially alters functional connectivity during emotion perception across cultures

Front Psychol. 2024 Feb 15:14:1084059. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1084059. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Joseph Leshin^#¹, Maleah J Carter^#¹, Cameron M Doyle¹, Kristen A Lindquist^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States.
² Biomedical Research Imaging Center, School of Medicine, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Introduction: It is often assumed that the ability to recognize the emotions of others is reflexive and automatic, driven only by observable facial muscle configurations. However, research suggests that accumulated emotion concept knowledge shapes the way people perceive the emotional meaning of others' facial muscle movements. Cultural upbringing can shape an individual's concept knowledge, such as expectations about which facial muscle configurations convey anger, disgust, or sadness. Additionally, growing evidence suggests that access to emotion category words, such as "anger," facilitates access to such emotion concept knowledge and in turn facilitates emotion perception.

Methods: To investigate the impact of cultural influence and emotion concept accessibility on emotion perception, participants from two cultural groups (Chinese and White Americans) completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning session to assess functional connectivity between brain regions during emotion perception. Across four blocks, participants were primed with either English emotion category words ("anger," "disgust") or control text (XXXXXX) before viewing images of White American actors posing facial muscle configurations that are stereotypical of anger and disgust in the United States.

Results: We found that when primed with "disgust" versus control text prior to seeing disgusted facial expressions, Chinese participants showed a significant decrease in functional connectivity between a region associated with semantic retrieval (the inferior frontal gyrus) and regions associated with semantic processing, visual perception, and social cognition. Priming the word "anger" did not impact functional connectivity for Chinese participants relative to control text, and priming neither "disgust" nor "anger" impacted functional connectivity for White American participants.

Discussion: These findings provide preliminary evidence that emotion concept accessibility differentially impacts perception based on participants' cultural background.

Keywords: concepts; culture; emotion; fMRI; language.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation BCS 1551688 (PI KL) and DGE 1650116 (GRFs CD and JL).