title: Processing Narratives Concerning Protected Values: A Cross-Cultural Investigation of Neural Correlates.
abstract: Narratives are an important component of culture and play a central role in transmitting social values. Little is known, however, about how the brain of a listener/reader processes narratives. A receiver's response to narration is influenced by the narrator's framing and appeal to values. Narratives that appeal to "protected values," including core personal, national, or religious values, may be particularly effective at influencing receivers. Protected values resist compromise and are tied with identity, affective value, moral decision-making, and other aspects of social cognition. Here, we investigated the neural mechanisms underlying reactions to protected values in narratives. During fMRI scanning, we presented 78 American, Chinese, and Iranian participants with real-life stories distilled from a corpus of over 20 million weblogs. Reading these stories engaged the posterior medial, medial prefrontal, and temporo-parietal cortices. When participants believed that the protagonist was appealing to a protected value, signal in these regions was increased compared with when no protected value was perceived, possibly reflecting the intensive and iterative search required to process this material. The effect strength also varied across groups, potentially reflecting cultural differences in the degree of concern for protected values.
authors.affiliation: Brain and Creativity Institute.|Department of Psychology.
authors.forename: Jonas T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Kaplan
authors.affiliation: Brain and Creativity Institute.
authors.forename: Sarah I
authors.initials: SI
authors.lastname: Gimbel
authors.affiliation: Brain and Creativity Institute.|Department of Psychology.|Department of Computer Science.
authors.forename: Morteza
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dehghani
authors.affiliation: Brain and Creativity Institute.|Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Mary Helen
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Immordino-Yang
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science.|Institute for Creative Technologies.
authors.forename: Kenji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sagae
authors.affiliation: Brain and Creativity Institute.
authors.forename: Jennifer D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.affiliation: Brain and Creativity Institute.
authors.forename: Christine M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Tipper
authors.affiliation: Brain and Creativity Institute.|Department of Psychology.
authors.forename: Hanna
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Damasio
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science.|Institute for Creative Technologies.
authors.forename: Andrew S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Gordon
authors.affiliation: Brain and Creativity Institute.|Department of Psychology.
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Damasio
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D002681:China; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007492:Iran; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D009014:Morals; D033262:Narration; D012933:Social Identification; D014481:United States; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: default mode network; fMRI; narrative; protected values