The Geography of Thought
September 28th, 2007How Asians and Westerners Think Differently… and Why
by Richard E. Nisbett
ISBN: 0743216466
I was very interested in what I thought was the idea of behind book, but it took me a bit to warm up to it once I started reading. I’m glad I stuck with it. Though Nisbett can come across as a wee bit impressed with himself for thinking beyond the apparently typical and academically reinforced boundaries, this is some interesting stuff. Two key ideas:
- People generally believe (because we have been taught to) that everyone thinks alike — that we have “the same basic cognitive processes”. This isn’t true.
- Formal logic isn’t the be-all end-all. Dialectics or the “Middle Way” is a valuable method of reasoning.
How these ideas play out and the examples Nisbett uses were sometimes surprising to me. Nisbett tells us that Western kids learn nouns faster than verbs and East Asian kids learn verbs faster — a concrete example of how thinking (intimately related to language acquisition) is different. I’m not sure why that surprised me, but it did, and it also made sense and helped his central argument click with me. Other examples taken from things researchers have used in the field surprised me because, well, apparently I’m pretty Eastern in my thinking for a Westerner. Here’s a quick test/example: Imagine a picture of a cow, imagine a picture of a chicken, and imagine a picture of some grass. Which would you group with the cow, the chicken or the grass? Or, of these three words — panda, monkey, banana — which two are most closely related? Apparently, Americans tend to answer one way, and Chinese participants answer another way when asked these questions.
Now, I’m the product of the Western educational system, I’ve never lived in an Asian country, and I have no reason to suspect my answers should trend differently than would be expected from my demographic group. Which brings me to what I suspect is a flaw in these studies and in thinking about thought in Eastern vs Western terms: they don’t sufficiently account for gender differences. Nisbett says, reflecting on one of the “rare” studies indicating that Western men and women differ from each other more than Eastern men and women do, that researchers have “been unable to characterize the difference between tasks for which we find gender differences and those for which we don’t”. I suspect they need to do more research, because I’d be surprised if either there isn’t a pattern there, or if there isn’t in fact a larger difference between Western men and women than previously indicated.
Overall, I found this book valuable because it challenges what I think of as the assumption of “default personhood”. Nisbett veers toward kumbaya territory when he talks about how the two styles of thinking may meet as each moves toward the others. I believe the real value is in recognizing different thought processes, and being able to develop the ability to focus with and use patterns of thinking to expand our problem-solving capabilities.
[I'd love to hear how you answered the questions -- if you're so inclined, share in the comments. I answered the more typically Eastern way: cow goes with grass, monkey and banana are most closely related.]
June 2nd, 2008 at 4:20 pm
The example with cow and grass gave me also a deep insight, because a lot of IQ tests use similar questions, an i sometime thought, the questioner was wrong or at least the question is ambiguous. I really missed a comment on black Africa, is there thinking west, east or “south”?