Editorial: Understanding cross-cultural differences through cognition and perception analysis: integrating neuroscience and cultural psychology, volume II

The COVID-19 crisis has examined the existence of considerable cross-cultural variances in human cognition and perception at both individual and social levels, as described by the well-known individualism-collectivism and holistic-analytic mental paradigms. More specifically, during the pandemic, people all around the globe were facing serious psychosocial challenges elicited by enforced social distancing, mandate quarantine and remote working. However, as reflected by the hot topic whether citizens should wear masks in the public, evidence indicates that culturally-diverse people might perceive various levels of tensions between personal liberties and societal constraints, thus triggering distinct catastrophic feelings toward the same emergency or disaster (Cupples and Glynn, 2014; Chin et al., 2022b). Notwithstanding it is recognized that people with different cultural beliefs vary in their tolerance to environmental stress as well as in their accepted standards of social norms (Chin et al., 2021), hitherto the currently-fragmented results and limited empirical findings have still left a lot of controversies and puzzles unsolved. Further, many classical studies concerning relevant issues place a major emphasis on explaining causal relevance and attribution between culture and human's mental activities (Choi, 2003; Redding, 2017), rather than exploring the underlying cerebrum mechanisms driving the development of cognition. In response, the main motivation behind this Research Topic (RT) is to fill the lacuna by demonstrating cultural variations through a more modern, more neuroscientific cognition and perception analysis. According to the literature (Hofstede et al., 2010; Chin et al., 2022a; Han, 2022), the discipline of cultural psychology focuses on elucidating how cultural factors involving mental programming influence human cognition and perception, while the domain of neuroscience explains the forming process of human cognition and perception through exploring robust activators of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis of human brains, the neuroendocrine control system of human responses to stressors. Whereas, we believe that no single discipline, methodology or instrument can perfectly address the identified gap noted preciously, it seems particularly meaningful to advance to adopt an unconventional, integrative view that links the more objective, scientific approach of neuroscience to profound cultural meanings for making better sense of cross-cultural variances. Taking together the arguments above, the aim of this RT is to call for interdisciplinary studies at the intersection of cultural psychology and neuroscience that may offer new insights, unorthodox theoretical frameworks or novel methodologies for achieving a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of cross-cultural difference in the post pandemic world riddled with political uncertainty and inter-cultural conflicts. Moreover, the central term of “culture” is defined in a broader way, so as to encourage authors to consider all levels of analysis about cultural differences. Fortunately, we are very pleased to claim that in total, 49 submissions were received, of which 16 fascinating articles by 60 authors went through rigorous peer-review processes and have been published. To more clearly address the unique value of our SI, below we further classify the 16 articles into three categories based on the methodology used, the main findings discussed and the key implications provided.