(Im)patience and Culture
Just as some people are better than others at delaying gratification in exchange for greater reward, so are some cultures. People from the west generally prefer immediate reward; people from the east are generally more patient.
To learn more about how these tendencies manifest in our minds, researchers led by psychologist Bokyung Kim of Stanford University scanned the brains of American and South Korean students as they decided whether to accept an immediate cash payment or a slightly larger sum in two weeks. They observed large activity differences in brain regions involved with reward (pictured above), but surprisingly little difference in regions involved with self-control. Americans weren't necessarily impulsive or undisciplined. Instead, the promised reward literally felt more valuable to them.
Image: Activity in reward-linked brain regions of American and Korean test subjects presented with a choice between immediate and delayed payments. (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B)
Citation: "The neural basis of cultural differences in delay discounting." By Bokyung Kim, Young Shin Sung and Samuel M. McClure. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Vol. 367 No. 1589, March 5, 2012.