The geography of thought : how Asians and Westerners think differently and why

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Title:

Author:

Nisbett, Richard E.

ISBN:

9781857883282

Personal Author:

Nisbett, Richard E.

Publication Information:

London : Nicholas Brealey, 2003.

Physical Description:

xxiii, 263 p.: ill. ; 24 cm.

Contents:

1. The Syllogism and the Tao: Philosophy, Science, and Society in Ancient Greece and China -- 2. The Social Origins of Mind: Economics, Social Practices, and Thought -- 3. Living Together vs. Going It Alone: Social Life and Sense of Self in the Modern East and West -- 4. "Eyes in Back of Your Head" or "Keep Your Eye on the Ball"?: Envisioning the World -- 5. "The Bad Seed" or "The Other Boys Made Him Do It"?: Causal Attribution and Causal Modeling East and West -- 6. Is the World Made Up of Nouns or Verbs?: Categories and Rules vs. Relationships and Similarities -- 7. "Ce N'est Pas Logique" or "You've Got a Point There"?: Logic and the Law of Noncontradiction vs. Dialectics and the Middle Way -- 8. And If the Nature of Thought Is Not Everywhere the Same?: Implications for Psychology, Philosophy, Education, and Everyday Life -- Epilogue: The End of Psychology or the Clash of Mentalities?: The Longevity of Differences.

Subject Term:

Cognition and culture.

East and West.

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168015724137	153.4 N724G 2003	1	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

When 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 behavior.