Behavioral studies have shown that people from Western cultural contexts perform better on tasks emphasizing independent (absolute) dimensions than on tasks emphasizing interdependent (relative) dimensions, while the opposite is true for people from East Asian contexts. We assessed responses in functional magnetic resonance imaging during simple visuospatial tasks in which participants made absolute judgments (ignoring the visual context) or relative judgments (considering the visual context). In each group, activation in brain areas in the frontal and parietal lobes known to be associated with attentional control was greater during culturally non-preferred judgments than during culturally preferred judgments. Moreover, in each group, differences in activation in these areas correlated strongly with the results of questionnaires measuring individual differences in cultural-typical identity. Thus, an individual's cultural background and the degree to which the individual approves of cultural values moderate the activation of brain networks engaged even during simple visual-attentional tasks.