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The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why |  |
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The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why | |
Nisbett shows in The Geography of Thought, people think about -- and even see -- the world differently because of differing ecologies, social structures, philosophies, and educational systems that date back to ancient Greece and China. The Geography of Thought documents Professor Nisbett's groundbreaking research in cultural psychology, addressing questions such as:
Why did the ancient Chinese excel at algebra and arithmetic, but not geometry, the brilliant achievement of such Greeks as Euclid?
Why do East Asians find it so difficult to disentangle an object from its surroundings?
Why do Western infants learn nouns more rapidly than verbs, when it is the other way around in East Asia?
At a moment in history when the need for cross-cultural understanding and collaboration have never been more important, The Geography of Thought offers both a map to that gulf and a blueprint for a bridge that might be able to span it.
编辑推荐 From Publishers Weekly
This book may mark the beginning of a new front in the science wars. Nisbett, an eminent psychologist and co-author of a seminal Psychological Review paper on how people talk about their decision making, reports on some of his latest work in cultural psychology. He contends that "[h]uman cognition is not everywhere the same"-that those brought up in Western and East Asian cultures think differently from one another in scientifically measurable ways. Such a contention pits his work squarely against evolutionary psychology (as articulated by Steven Pinker and others) and cognitive science, which assume all appreciable human characteristics are "hard wired." Initial chapters lay out the traditional differences between Aristotle and Confucius, and the social practices that produced (and have grown out of) these differing "homeostatic approaches" to the world: Westerners tend to inculcate individualism and choice (40 breakfast cereals at the supermarket), while East Asians are oriented toward group relations and obligations ("the tall poppy is cut down" remains a popular Chinese aphorism). Next, Nisbett presents his actual experiments and data, many of which measure reaction times in recalling previously shown objects. They seem to show East Asians (a term Nisbett uses as a catch-all for Chinese, Koreans, Japanese and others) measurably more holistic in their perceptions (taking in whole scenes rather than a few stand-out objects). Westerners, or those brought up in Northern European and Anglo-Saxon-descended cultures, have a "tunnel-vision perceptual style" that focuses much more on identifying what's prominent in certain scenes and remembering it. Writing dispassionately yet with engagement, Nisbett explains the differences as "an inevitable consequence of using different tools to understand the world." If his explanation turns out to be generally accepted, it means a big victory for memes in their struggle with genes.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Scientific American
Nisbett, a psychologist and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, used to believe that "all human groups perceive and reason in the same way." A series of events and studies led him gradually to quite another view, that Asians and Westerners "have maintained very different systems of thought for thousands of years." Different how? "The collective or interdependent nature of Asian society is consistent with Asians' broad, contextual view of the world and their belief that events are highly complex and determined by many factors. The individualistic or independent nature of Western society seems consistent with the Western focus on particular objects in isolation from their context and with Westerners' belief that they can know the rules governing objects and therefore can control the objects' behavior." Nisbett explores areas that manifest these different approaches--among them medicine, law, science, human rights and international relations. Are the societal differences so great that they will lead to conflict? Nisbett thinks not. "I believe the twain shall meet by virtue of each moving in the direction of the other."
Editors of Scientific American --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
A social psychologist in academia, Nisbett here expresses how intrigued he is by the cognitive differences between East Asians and Americans. While this may strike some as an excursion into a sea of stereotype, others will consider Nisbett's evidence, procured from his and his students' experiments. Often these are visual, as the subject is asked to identify relationships among objects; or the tests may be verbal, gauging logical inference. The author notes that the large majority of the American group perceives or responds one way, and a like portion of the East Asian group reacts almost oppositely. Nisbett reports that an American tends to extract objects from their environments, creating rules to establish relationships, whereas an East Asian conceives of things as inseparable from their context. Ascribing the source of these outlooks to Aristotelian and Confucian conceptions of the world, Nisbett boldly, if controversially, challenges the assumption that all people everywhere think the same way. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Providence Journal-Bulletin
Understanding the thought processes of other cultures may very well
turn out to be critical to the survival of Western civilization....The Geography of Thought is a wake-up call.
Publishers Weekly
The Geography of Thought may mark the beginning of a new
front in the science wars.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Nisbett's findings pose provocative challenges to universalist assumptions about human thought and inference.
Review
Shinobu Kitayama Faculty of Integrated Human Studies, Kyoto University The cultural differences in cognition, demonstrated in this groundbreaking work, are far more profound and wide-ranging than anybody in the field could have possibly imagined just a decade ago. The findings are surprising for universalists, remarkable for culturalists, and, regardless, they are most thought-provoking for all students of human cognition. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
