Lindquist et al. argue that emotional categories do not map onto distinct regions within the brain, but rather, arise from basic psychological processes, including conceptualization, executive attention, and core affect. Here, we use examples from cultural neuroscience to argue that psychological constructionism, not locationism, captures the essential role of emotion in the social and cultural brain.

Affect control theory posits that emotions are constructed by social and cultural forces. Rogers, Schröder, and von Scheve introduce affect control theory as a conceptual and methodological “hub,” linking theories from different disciplines across levels of analysis. To illustrate this further, we apply their framework to cultural priming, an experimental technique in cultural psychology and neuroscience for testing how exposure to cultural symbols changes people’s behavior, cognition, and emotion. Our analysis supports the use of affect control theory in linking different (...) levels of analysis while leaving some opening questions for improving such a framework in future research. (shrink)