Self-construal differences in neural responses to negative social cues.

•Individual differences in self-construal modulate brain responses to social threat.•Collectivists engaged the parahippocampal gyrus to negative faces.•Collectivists also evidenced more context-dependent neural activity.•Individualists activated appraisal and self-focus regions to negative contexts.•Self-construal may be an organizing framework for emotion processing in the brain.