Lately it seems people are talking more and more about 'culture differences', how things appear differently to people from different cultures - for example the completely different discussions and atmosphere on the Russian and English forums - I was wondering if anyone here has any thoughts on this. Recently I saw a book called "The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently . . . And Why" by a psychologist Richard Nisbett. Here is an
article describing his book, and here is a paraphrased summary including some things not mentioned in the article.
Basically what Nisbett is arguing in this book is that the assumption that everyone has the same 'cognitive processes' is false, that people in different cultures are not only taught different things or exposed to different parts of the world but actually
think differently. The people of Western countries are more concerned generally with the individual, with classification, with logic, and with logical contradiction (if you're X you can't be Y); they find it easy to consider objects outside of their surroundings and assume that you can use the same procedures to reason about anything and that, once you know the rules that govern objects' behavior, you can tell what will happen to them. People in Asia, on the other hand, are much more inclined to consider relationships between objects and their environments (other objects, people), are much more relaxed when it comes to contradiction and in general believe that you need to understand the whole before you can understand the part, that pieces intrinsically make more sense when they're placed into specific contexts. In a study, for example, when subjects were asked to describe themselves, Americans would say things like, "I'm serious, I work hard, I like math," where Chinese would say, "I'm fun-loving with my friends, I'm serious at work" - in other words he suggests that context is much more important and individuality is much more fluid; one becomes a different person in different situations, where Westerners like to consider themselves the same in all contexts.
Another way this difference manifests itself is in the language: in English for example, you might ask "More tea?" while in Chinese the correct way to ask is "Drink more?" For English-speakers the drinking is obvious, so they ask about the object; in Chinese the object is obvious and the verb is more important.
There are also some linguistic studies in which it seems that children in Western cultures learn nouns faster than verbs, while in Eastern cultures children learn verbs at the same rate as nouns and in some cases (depending on what is classified as a noun) even faster. The author points to different ways in which parents talk to their children - from a very early age, he says, Asian parents emphasize 'feeling' and the relationships between action and the surroundings - whereas an American parent might say, "that's a truck; see, it has four wheels and is red" a Japanese parent would be more inclined to say, "that's a truck, vroom-vroom, give it to me, now I give it to you, there." So from an early age you have the appearance and cultivation of different cognitive processes across cultures.
He also goes back to the ancient Greeks and the ancient Chinese, pointing to Aristotle's ideas about physics among other things: the stone falls to the ground because it has the quality of "gravity" whereas the stick floats on the water because it has the quality of "levity" - all his theories are about the object, in other words, without thinking of the environment acting on it. Whereas the Chinese had the ideal of "harmony," emphasizing everyone's place and role in the society. In another study Westerners, given a situation which they could choose to be alone or in a group, thought they they would be better off alone, and Asians thought it would be better to be in a group.
Ahhhh, I don't know about some of these; I remember my mom saying things like "the carrots are crying" when I wouldn't eat them
which is supposedly something common for Asians and not so common in the West, but overall I thought it was interesting and a lot of it was right ... And I know this article is about just the West and East Asia, but maybe there are different 'cognitive processes' in Russia and Eastern Europe as opposed to America and Western Europe as well? And if so, what are they?
I have a Russian friend, for example, who has lived 12 years in the US now and always claims that certain ideas of mine are "American"
For example, she complains that Americans are brought up to think that they're wonderful, everyone is wonderful and smart, and she would say,
it's not true, not everyone has brilliant ideas to contribute.
And she thinks in general that young people don't have enough respect for authority; students can read Lotman's essays on literature and think that they have something comparable and good to say, whereas she still regards such a famous critic as knowing much better than her. When I try to say that after all Lotman was a person like I am now and maybe I'll write a book of my own one day, who knows, but can't I think about literature for myself as well, she would say that's an "American" way of thinking
I do understand what she says, and perhaps this isn't a very good example - I can think of a lot more, but what does everyone else think? Is there a "universal" way of thinking, or do people really reason differently about the world?