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The Emerging (Social) Neuroscience of SES
Author(s) -
Varnum Michael E. W.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
social and personality psychology compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.699
H-Index - 53
ISSN - 1751-9004
DOI - 10.1111/spc3.12258
Subject(s) - social neuroscience , psychology , cultural neuroscience , socioeconomic status , vigilance (psychology) , neural correlates of consciousness , neurolaw , cognitive neuroscience , developmental cognitive neuroscience , cognitive psychology , neuroscience , social cognition , cognition , sociology , population , demography
Social scientists have long been interested in understanding how socioeconomic status (SES) affects the way people think, feel, and behave. Neuroscience has provided new tools (fMRI, EEG, and ERP) to allow us to answer these questions, demonstrating, for example, that lower SES is linked to stronger mirror neural responses, greater mentalizing, enhanced vigilance to threat, and lesser likelihood to spontaneously infer traits based on limited information. The present paper (i) reviews evidence that SES affects neural responses involved in a wide range of psychological processes, (ii) highlights the value of neural methods in investigations of SES, (iii) discusses cultural neuroscience as a potential framework to understand why SES has the effects it does on the brain, (iv) considers previous developmental neuroscience findings regarding SES and attention in light of cultural neuroscience, and (v) discusses future challenges, opportunities, and questions for this emerging field.