The Geography of ThoughtWhen Richard Nisbett showed an animated underwater scene to his American students, they zeroed in on a big fish swimming among smaller fish. Japanese subjects, on the other hand, made observations about the background environment...and the different "seeings" are a clue to profound underlying cognitive differences between Westerners and East Asians. As Professor Nisbett shows in The Geography of Thought people actually think - and even see - the world differently, because of differing ecologies, social structures, philosophies, and educational systems that date back to ancient Greece and China, and that have survived into the modern world. As a result, East Asian thought is "holistic" - drawn to the perceptual field as a whole, and to relations among objects and events within that field. By comparison to Western modes of reasoning, East Asian thought relies far less on categories, or on formal logic; it is fundamentally dialectic, seeking a "middle way" between opposing thoughts. By contrast, Westerners focus on salient objects or people, use attributes to assign them to categories, and apply rules of formal logic to understand their behaviour. |
From inside the book
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... Lu, Gang, 111–14, 129 Luria, Alexander, 85–86 Luther, Martin, 41 McGuire, William, 171 McIlvane, Thomas, 112–14 magistrates, Chinese, 39 magnetism, 21 management, business, 62–65, 82–83, 98,
... Lu, Gang, 111–14, 129 Luria, Alexander, 85–86 Luther, Martin, 41 McGuire, William, 171 McIlvane, Thomas, 112–14 magistrates, Chinese, 39 magnetism, 21 management, business, 62–65, 82–83, 98,
Contents
The Syllogism and the | |
The Social Origins of Mind | |
Living Together vs Going It Alone | |
Eyes in Back of Your Head or Keep Your Eye on the Ball? | |
The Bad Seed or The Other Boys Made Him Do It? | |
Is the World Made Up of Nouns or Verbs? | |
Ce Nest Pas Logique or Youve Got a Point There? | |
And If the Nature of Thought Is Not Everywhere the Same? | |
Other editions - View all
The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently - and Why Richard E. Nisbett No preview available - 2019 |
Common terms and phrases
abstract American participants ancient Chinese Ara Norenzayan argument Aristotle’s Asian Americans Asians today asked participants attributes behavior believe causal China Chinese and American Chinese philosophers cognitive colleagues complex Confucian context contradiction crosscultural culture debate Developmental psychologists dialectical East Asians Easterners and Westerners environment European Americans evidence example fact factors field dependent Fundamental Attribution Error Gang Lu goals Greeks HampdenTurner and Trompenaars harmony holistic Hong Kong important Incheol Choi independent individual inferences ingroup interdependent Japan Japanese Kaiping Peng Kitayama Koreans Koreans and Americans language law of noncontradiction less Lijun Ji Markus Mohists nature Nisbett nouns objects one’s orientation outgroup particular people’s percent Personality and Social preference Press principle propositions reasoning relations relationships rules sense showed situation Social Psychology societies Taoist target tend tested things thought understand University of Michigan values verbs West whereas Witkin