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Previous research suggests that individuals from individualistic and collectivistic cultures, due to different construal of the self and social groups, might have different emotional experiences and attenuate their emotional experiences differently across situations. The current research investigates the influence of these cultural orientations specifically on the neural response to different valences of emotions and across different social situations. Event-related brain potentials were recorded when individualism-representative Dutch in the Netherlands and collectivism-representative Chinese participants in China (N = 40) viewed affective pictures (the International Affective Picture System) while being alone, being accompanied by a culturally similar person, and being accompanied by a culturally dissimilar person. The late positive potential (LPP) in Dutch participants showed a differentiation between valences (negative vs. positive) of emotions while this was not the case for Chinese participants. This suggests a wider range of emotional experience in the Dutch group and possibly stronger emotional attenuation in the Chinese group. Furthermore, the Chinese group showed a hemispheric differentiation in LPP amplitude between culturally similar and dissimilar situations whereas the Dutch did not. However, this effect was small and laterality index analysis indicated that there was no corresponding statistically significant difference in hemispheric dominance. These findings indicate that culture has an effect on neural emotional responding indexed by LPP. Evidence for a role of culture in the impact of social situation on emotional responding indexed by LPP was weak.

Children’s peer relationships are crucial for their social-emotional development, mental and physical health. To identify effective strategies to facilitate peer relationships among 8–14-year-olds, a systematic review of intervention programs was conducted. Electronic databases ERIC, EMBASE, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Cochrane Collection Library and grey literature sources were searched for intervention studies with general or clinical populations published between 2000 and 2020. Interventions had to assess quantity or quality of peer relationships as an outcome measure, thus focusing on helping children to establish more positive relationships or improving their self-reported relationship quality. Sixty-five papers were identified and grouped into universal prevention programs, selective interventions for typically developing children and indicated interventions for children with clinical diagnosis. Prevention programs and interventions for typically developing children facilitated peer relationships by targeting mental wellbeing and self-concepts. Clinical interventions focused on social-emotional skills, symptoms and peer behaviors. Successful programs showed a close alignment of methods and targeted program effects. Practitioners should also be aware of realistic goals for each population. Programs for a general population showed potential to decrease loneliness, whereas clinical populations achieved high increases in play dates, peer acceptance and sociometric status.