Scan barcode
Reviews
The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why by Richard Nisbett
ben_smitty's review
4.0
In Thai, the word for I depends on the person you are speaking with. Males can use เค้า, เรา, กู, ผม, ฉัน, or they can even refer to themselves by using their proper names. My identity is dependent on who I am speaking with, and changing who I am in different social contexts is expected. In English, it's just "I," a fixed identity, and changing who I am in different contexts is seen as "not being myself."
I thought Nisbett's hypothesis on how Asians and Westerners came to think differently was fascinating. He believes that because the Greeks lived in mountainous terrains close to the sea, it allowed them to live more independently, which allowed them to debate and search for truth without costing them too much; there were hunters, fishers, gatherers, traders etc. but they were not as reliant on a harmonious society as the Chinese were.
In China, there were "fertile plains, low mountains, and navigable rivers," which favored agriculture. If you can't get along with each other (or with the authorities), you don't get to eat because people "cultivate the land in concert with one another," so finding a middle ground was always favorable (think of the Yin-yang symbol of harmony in contradiction).
The rest of book grows from this hypothesis. Nisbett shows that Asians and Westerners think in drastically different ways. He cites psychological studies by universities from both the Eastern and Western hemispheres. Basically, Asians are more likely to think contextually (the circumstances control the man, your identity is found in your relationship with people, backgrounds first) vs. Westerners tend to think more objectively (the man controls the circumstances, you are who you are because of your individual characteristics, the background is secondary).
While Nisbett's material is important for the future of psychological research (especially when it tries to put a "this is how all humans think" label to certain studies), it was a little dry. I still highly recommend it though.
I thought Nisbett's hypothesis on how Asians and Westerners came to think differently was fascinating. He believes that because the Greeks lived in mountainous terrains close to the sea, it allowed them to live more independently, which allowed them to debate and search for truth without costing them too much; there were hunters, fishers, gatherers, traders etc. but they were not as reliant on a harmonious society as the Chinese were.
In China, there were "fertile plains, low mountains, and navigable rivers," which favored agriculture. If you can't get along with each other (or with the authorities), you don't get to eat because people "cultivate the land in concert with one another," so finding a middle ground was always favorable (think of the Yin-yang symbol of harmony in contradiction).
The rest of book grows from this hypothesis. Nisbett shows that Asians and Westerners think in drastically different ways. He cites psychological studies by universities from both the Eastern and Western hemispheres. Basically, Asians are more likely to think contextually (the circumstances control the man, your identity is found in your relationship with people, backgrounds first) vs. Westerners tend to think more objectively (the man controls the circumstances, you are who you are because of your individual characteristics, the background is secondary).
While Nisbett's material is important for the future of psychological research (especially when it tries to put a "this is how all humans think" label to certain studies), it was a little dry. I still highly recommend it though.
sprague's review
5.0
Excellent and thought-provoking summary of the claim that East and West think differently.
Anyone who has spent time in another culture quickly discovers that people are people, that there is wide variation among people and their personalities. When you try too hard to generalize, you get it wrong because you'll always find exceptions.
Also, some of the things that characterize people are, frankly, a question of modernity and development. Once you've taken a logic class, you "get it", and you'll apply its lessons through the rest of your life. If not, you may not.
I also think many of the ideas presented are true only of americans in a particular period of time. One hundred years ago, people may have been more deferrent to authority, for example. Americans don't seem to be as detail-oriented as the Chinese I have worked with day-to-day-- but that could be self-selection, and I bet that's a common problem in the scientific studies
This book tries to see if the generalizations have merit, summarizing the psychological studies that have been performed, and boy does it do a good job: dozens and dozens of studies.
Worth reading. I'm not sure what I think about it yet, but it's definitely shifting my conclusions.
Anyone who has spent time in another culture quickly discovers that people are people, that there is wide variation among people and their personalities. When you try too hard to generalize, you get it wrong because you'll always find exceptions.
Also, some of the things that characterize people are, frankly, a question of modernity and development. Once you've taken a logic class, you "get it", and you'll apply its lessons through the rest of your life. If not, you may not.
I also think many of the ideas presented are true only of americans in a particular period of time. One hundred years ago, people may have been more deferrent to authority, for example. Americans don't seem to be as detail-oriented as the Chinese I have worked with day-to-day-- but that could be self-selection, and I bet that's a common problem in the scientific studies
This book tries to see if the generalizations have merit, summarizing the psychological studies that have been performed, and boy does it do a good job: dozens and dozens of studies.
Worth reading. I'm not sure what I think about it yet, but it's definitely shifting my conclusions.
lpm100's review
2.0
2.0 out of 5 stars So what?
Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2018
Verified Purchase
The first question I have is: how does the author know any of this?
Does he speak Chinese? Did he live there?
The second question is with his competence in the subject of study. (Let's remember that he is a social psychologist, and not a historian.) One glaring error is that he leaves out Legalism entirely. Legalism has a very long history in China, and almost as long as that of Confucianism. How he missed that is beyond me.
The third question is with the intellectual Foundation of treating civilizations that were in Chinese orbit as offshoots of China.
Japan took a lot of ideas from China, but they also had no problem with adapting to different ways. (Korea is a similar example that happened much later).
Vietnam was a Chinese Colony for a thousand years, but they aren't quite the same thing as China nor the same thing as Japan and Korea.
I wonder if a better way to take this could have been to describe the thought process in terms of geographic factors, (a la "Guns, Gems, and Steel" by Jared Diamond). To wit: China was a huge, self contained hegemon and it was fairly homogeneous, and so there was no conflict of ideas because no one would ever meet someone with different ideas. And therefore no reason to develop these thought processes.
Japan and Korea were both smaller places, and so they had to develop the techniques of dealing with new ideas.
Greece was composed of a number of small city-states, and so is there any mystery that they were used to working with and evaluating new ideas?
Even then, to treat it in that way would need some qualifications. People in coastal places like Guangdong and Fujian have been merchants and seafaring people from hundreds of years, and some new ideas are something to which they have become accustomed.
I also have questions with this type of reasoning in general. If you have an idea of the principles of Darwinian evolution (such as it is), it doesn't mean that you can go forward and predict the existence of when antibiotic resistance will occur or what new species will exist thousands of years before the event.
And if you can go backwards and create ex post facto explanations, then so what?
And then the explanations that a person wants depends on which questions they ask. (I lived in China for many years. 11, by my count.) And I noticed that Chinese people had the most difficult time using processes that had already been developed.
So, there would be an International Baccalaureate curriculum that was already developed, but they could not maintain the program because they just could not follow the instructions in the way that they were detailed.
If that happens to have been my slice of reality, would I have predicted it from this book? Or, is it just a trivial empirical observation about something that I should take as read for future reference?
There's also discussion of a number of "big picture" theories. Marxism. Sociology. These theories are huge, broad and expansive, but they are extremely useless for limited, specific, REAL LIFE predictions.
So, it happens that Continental Europeans make bigger theories. So now what?
It feels like this author is trying to develop the intellectual Foundation to explain something whose existence he could never have predicted anyway.
And so the (fourth) question comes again..... "So what?"
If your time to read books is limited, I recommend that you give this one a miss. And read the Jared Diamond book in preference to it.
Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2018
Verified Purchase
The first question I have is: how does the author know any of this?
Does he speak Chinese? Did he live there?
The second question is with his competence in the subject of study. (Let's remember that he is a social psychologist, and not a historian.) One glaring error is that he leaves out Legalism entirely. Legalism has a very long history in China, and almost as long as that of Confucianism. How he missed that is beyond me.
The third question is with the intellectual Foundation of treating civilizations that were in Chinese orbit as offshoots of China.
Japan took a lot of ideas from China, but they also had no problem with adapting to different ways. (Korea is a similar example that happened much later).
Vietnam was a Chinese Colony for a thousand years, but they aren't quite the same thing as China nor the same thing as Japan and Korea.
I wonder if a better way to take this could have been to describe the thought process in terms of geographic factors, (a la "Guns, Gems, and Steel" by Jared Diamond). To wit: China was a huge, self contained hegemon and it was fairly homogeneous, and so there was no conflict of ideas because no one would ever meet someone with different ideas. And therefore no reason to develop these thought processes.
Japan and Korea were both smaller places, and so they had to develop the techniques of dealing with new ideas.
Greece was composed of a number of small city-states, and so is there any mystery that they were used to working with and evaluating new ideas?
Even then, to treat it in that way would need some qualifications. People in coastal places like Guangdong and Fujian have been merchants and seafaring people from hundreds of years, and some new ideas are something to which they have become accustomed.
I also have questions with this type of reasoning in general. If you have an idea of the principles of Darwinian evolution (such as it is), it doesn't mean that you can go forward and predict the existence of when antibiotic resistance will occur or what new species will exist thousands of years before the event.
And if you can go backwards and create ex post facto explanations, then so what?
And then the explanations that a person wants depends on which questions they ask. (I lived in China for many years. 11, by my count.) And I noticed that Chinese people had the most difficult time using processes that had already been developed.
So, there would be an International Baccalaureate curriculum that was already developed, but they could not maintain the program because they just could not follow the instructions in the way that they were detailed.
If that happens to have been my slice of reality, would I have predicted it from this book? Or, is it just a trivial empirical observation about something that I should take as read for future reference?
There's also discussion of a number of "big picture" theories. Marxism. Sociology. These theories are huge, broad and expansive, but they are extremely useless for limited, specific, REAL LIFE predictions.
So, it happens that Continental Europeans make bigger theories. So now what?
It feels like this author is trying to develop the intellectual Foundation to explain something whose existence he could never have predicted anyway.
And so the (fourth) question comes again..... "So what?"
If your time to read books is limited, I recommend that you give this one a miss. And read the Jared Diamond book in preference to it.
aliciaparry's review against another edition
3.0
This is really interesting stuff. The idea of differences in thought between the Easterners and Westerners (originating for the Chinese and the Greek) are significant and I really liked learning about how backgrounds affect how we think and therefore operate as societies. It was fascinating to look at our flaws as communities from very early on to see their impact in how we raise children, how we utilise a court of law in different ways, what catches our attention first (e.g. describing picture of fish in pond - Asians focused on background/pond whereas Americans pointed out objects/fish), our response to debate and speaking up, etc. Westerners focus on objects whereas Asians highlight relationships.
However, I detested reading it at times - it was extremely repetitive with numerous psychological experiments, and I felt like it was repeating the same point over and over again just to fill up the pages. It took me four months to read because despite my interest in the idea, it just didn't pull me in as a book.
“The Chinese believe in constant change, but with things always moving back to some prior state. They pay attention to a wide range of events; they search for relationships between things; and they think you can't understand the part without understanding the whole. Westerners live in a simpler, more deterministic world; they focus on salient objects or people instead of the larger picture; and they think they can control events because they know the rules that govern the behaviour of objects.”
However, I detested reading it at times - it was extremely repetitive with numerous psychological experiments, and I felt like it was repeating the same point over and over again just to fill up the pages. It took me four months to read because despite my interest in the idea, it just didn't pull me in as a book.
“The Chinese believe in constant change, but with things always moving back to some prior state. They pay attention to a wide range of events; they search for relationships between things; and they think you can't understand the part without understanding the whole. Westerners live in a simpler, more deterministic world; they focus on salient objects or people instead of the larger picture; and they think they can control events because they know the rules that govern the behaviour of objects.”