Are Asians and Asian Americans more or less likely to seek social support for dealing with stress than European Americans? On the one hand, the collectivist orientation of Asian countries might favor the sharing of stressful problems; on the other hand, efforts to maintain group harmony might discourage such efforts. In 2 studies, Koreans (Study 1) and Asians and Asian Americans in the United States (Study 2) reported using social support less for coping with stress than European Americans. Study 3 examined potential explanations for these effects and revealed that relationship concerns accounted for the cultural differences in use of support seeking. Discussion centers on the potential benefits and liabilities of seeking social support.

Social development has been the focus of a great deal of neuroscience based research over the past decade. In this review, we focus on providing a framework for understanding how changes in facets of social development may correspond with changes in brain function. We argue that (1) distinct phases of social behavior emerge based on whether the organizing social force is the mother, peer play, peer integration, or romantic intimacy; (2) each phase is marked by a high degree of affect-driven motivation that elicits a distinct response in subcortical structures; (3) activity generated by these structures interacts with circuits in prefrontal cortex that guide executive functions, and occipital and temporal lobe circuits, which generate specific sensory and perceptual social representations. We propose that the direction, magnitude and duration of interaction among these affective, executive, and perceptual systems may relate to distinct sensitive periods across development that contribute to establishing long-term patterns of brain function and behavior.

Recent evidence points to a possible overlap in the neural systems underlying the distressing experience that accompanies physical pain and social rejection (Eisenberger et al., 2003). The present study tested two hypotheses that stem from this suggested overlap, namely: (1) that baseline sensitivity to physical pain will predict sensitivity to social rejection and (2) that experiences that heighten social distress will heighten sensitivity to physical pain as well. In the current study, participants' baseline cutaneous heat pain unpleasantness thresholds were assessed prior to the completion of a task that manipulated feelings of social distress. During this task, participants played a virtual ball-tossing game, allegedly with two other individuals, in which they were either continuously included (social inclusion condition) or they were left out of the game by either never being included or by being overtly excluded (social rejection conditions). At the end of the game, three pain stimuli were delivered and participants rated the unpleasantness of each. Results indicated that greater baseline sensitivity to pain (lower pain unpleasantness thresholds) was associated with greater self-reported social distress in response to the social rejection conditions. Additionally, for those in the social rejection conditions, greater reports of social distress were associated with greater reports of pain unpleasantness to the thermal stimuli delivered at the end of the game. These results provide additional support for the hypothesis that pain distress and social distress share neurocognitive substrates. Implications for clinical populations are discussed.

Behavioral and neuropsychological studies have suggested multiple self-knowledge systems may exist (i.e., evidence-based and intuition-based self-knowledge); however, little is known about the nature of intuition-based self-knowledge. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging study, the neural correlates of intuition-based and evidence-based self-knowledge were investigated. Participants with high and low experience in different domains (soccer and acting) made self-descriptiveness judgments about words from each domain while being scanned. High-experience domain judgments produced activation in a network of neural structures called the X-system, involved in automatic social cognition, whereas low-experience domain judgments produced activations in a network called the C-system, involved in effortful social cognition and propositional thought. The affective and slow-changing nature of intuition-based self-knowledge is discussed.