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The Geography of Thought: How Asian and Westerners Think Differently ... and Why by Richard E. Nisbett
In his new book THE GEOGRAPHY OF THOUGHT: HOW ASIAN AND WESTERNERS THINK DIFFERENTLY ... AND WHY, RICHARD E. NISBETT makes the at first unassuming claim that Asians and Westerners "think differently". We knew that already.
But he means something profound: that "Asians" and "Westerners" have fundamentally different thought processes, that these can be defined and measured -- and that, in general, Westerners think in terms of objects and logic, while Asians think in terms of substances and relationships.
For example, when shown a cow and a chicken and a patch of grass and asked which the cow belongs better with the chicken or the grass, American tends to choose the chicken (both are animals), while Asians tend to choose the grass (the cow eats the grass). (I chose grass too, so go figure.)
The book provides many examples of this kind, some a bit too anecdotal for my taste, but presumably they are on the whole backed by statistically significant data. I won't go into the details here: the book is very readable and, at this level, largely convincing.
The results in (or results from) a very different world view:
- To the Asian, the world is a complex place, composed of continuous substances, understandable in terms of the whole rather in terms of the parts, and subject more to collective than to personal control. To the Westerner, the world is a relatively simple place, composed of discrete objects that can be understood with undue reference to context, and highly subject to personal control. Very different worlds, indeed.
And very interesting, as well.
But is it profound? Once one grasps the concept that thought processes need not be identical across all of humanity, it is easy to think of other cases where different groups of people have different mental processes, language being the most obvious. Chinese-speakers ("Asians") have a very different "phonemic space" than do English-speakers ("Westerners"). Chinese recognize tones as having phonemic value while Westerners do not: Chinese "hear" things Westerners just miss -- and vice-versa.
Why should we be surprised if this applies to other areas of cognition? We learn language through a series of prompts and feedback. We presumably learn many other things (table manners, religion, etc.), the same way: many "truths" are culturally-based. If Asians operate in an environment where the prevailing world view emphasizes relationships and change, it would not be surprising if they tended to reflect that when thinking or problem-solving in the real world and is perhaps no more significant Chinese-speakers having a tendency to speak Chinese.
Nesbitt is right in pointing out that most people do in fact assume that everyone else thinks just like they do. But international business consultants, of which I was and still am one, will always tell you that "translation" means far more than just translating the words. Projecting one's assumptions, priorities, value systems and operating environment onto someone from a different part of the world can lead to all sort of problems.
How deep and immutable is all this? It would appear that Asians can think more like Westerners when placed in a Western environment, and vice versa, just as people can learn other languages. Some of this happens naturally, and prompting or training can speed it up.
While, upon consideration, it may not be surprising that Nesbitt found these differences, the main contribution is perhaps that he has started to define and categorize them. The categorization is currently rather simplistic (dividing all of humanity into just two camps), but one can well imagine that further research would refine and extend the categories so that one would, ultimately, end up with something like a descriptive grammar of the way a group of people think.
However, the "and why" part of the subtitle left me unconvinced. I found Nesbitt's attempts to draw links between the differences in thought processes and sociology, history and linguistics to be somewhat tenuous. There is rather a large burden of proof required not least because similar attempts to identify "why" people speak in one way or another have been almost entirely discarded. Chinese do not use tones because of anything; any given Chinese-speaker uses tones because everyone around is using tones. Why is it necessary to demonstrate why Asians in general or Chinese in particular think differently? Perhaps these differences just arise independently like other attributes of culture such as associating black or white as the color of death
There is more than a little of post hoc, ergo propter hoc here. Nesbitt appears to argue that the different sets of thought processes he has found ultimately derive from the fact that the Chinese were agriculturists while the Greeks were traders and pirates, a difference due to environment that has ultimately affected all history and the shape of the world since. One might in fact think that Nesbitt is getting perilously close to cultural stereotyping. He quotes the Asian expression that "the peg that stands out is pounded down" as evidence of deep differences in the way Asians and Westerners think about individuality. However, the briefest of visits to China will turn up many examples of egregious conspicuous consumption, while many Westerners consider public flaunting of wealth to be in rather poor taste. Chinese seem just as prepared as Westerners to "stand out" if they think they can get away with it.
(Of course, the environment can affect thought; the question is whether the environment of 2000 or more years ago still affects thought patterns today.)
However, these over-extensions should not detract what is a very interesting and convincing set of results: that you can in fact define and measure differences in thought processes and that these seem very much to be correlated with other groupings, such as culture. Like Stephen Pinker's The Blank Slate, THE GEOGRAPHY OF THOUGHT: HOW ASIAN AND WESTERNERS THINK DIFFERENTLY ... AND WHY is a thought-provoking book which is well worth reading in spite of its attempt to push interesting results into places where perhaps they do not belong.
Peter Gordon
22/07/2003
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Peter Gordon is editor of The Asian Review of Books. |
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