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The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why by Richard Nisbett
pottedplnt's review
I was given this as a gift before leaving on a trip. I was initially very skeptical. I would have never bought or picked up this novel for myself. However, it’s interesting and I found myself bookmarking various pages.
I wouldn’t think too deeply about this book but I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the research done. It’s written by a UofM professor and he works hard to remain even handed and not fall into derivative stereotypes.
I wouldn’t think too deeply about this book but I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the research done. It’s written by a UofM professor and he works hard to remain even handed and not fall into derivative stereotypes.
erothoniel's review
5.0
This book was an enjoyable read.
Supposedly I could qualify as a scientist-in-making of first level, but my fields of study are not psychology. That being said, I did understand the problems and solutions expressed in this book.
The notion of differences in the way people think are not some miracle idea of recent years - we are being told from early age that no person is the same as the person sitting next to you, still the concepts of such profound diversity between West and East are somewhat novel.
I especially enjoyed how the author connected it to the way we talk, bringing up the year old problem of how language works.
Also this book really made me think about how I myself... think. I most definitely will try to find other sources of information about cognitive theories, thanks to this introduction in that field of study.
Supposedly I could qualify as a scientist-in-making of first level, but my fields of study are not psychology. That being said, I did understand the problems and solutions expressed in this book.
The notion of differences in the way people think are not some miracle idea of recent years - we are being told from early age that no person is the same as the person sitting next to you, still the concepts of such profound diversity between West and East are somewhat novel.
I especially enjoyed how the author connected it to the way we talk, bringing up the year old problem of how language works.
Also this book really made me think about how I myself... think. I most definitely will try to find other sources of information about cognitive theories, thanks to this introduction in that field of study.
jared_davis's review
2.0
I think this is an important topic yet horrendously treated by people who really should work harder at it, given their tenure and wide readership. You always need to be careful with a premise like Nisbett investigates in this book. One litmus test: “what does the author mean by Asian and Western?”
For Nisbett, “Asian” appears to mean Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. “Chinese”, in turn, means Han. All other nationalities and ethnicities within each modern nation state are ignored.
Likewise, “Western” primarily means Anglophone. Nisbett starts with a tepid discussion of “Greek thought” — better described as Athenian and Aristotelian thought as received through the Italian Renaissance and English Premoderns, again ignoring hundreds of distinct ideological lineages — and jumps to the Italian merchant states and then again into the late 20th century.
So, it seems Nisbett means, by the words “Asian” and “Western”, those stereotypes that already have a prevalent hold on armchair psychology. There’s nothing revealing here, all bias reinforcement, and literally billions of other peoples cultural and psychological experiences are completely ignored.
I do NOT mean to indict Nisbett for being insufficiently woke. He had a good opportunity in this book to highlight some important cultural differences and compare them with a common human description of psychology— but he went pretty hard down the boring old, meaningless road of “Westerners are individualist and Asians are collectivists” instead
For Nisbett, “Asian” appears to mean Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. “Chinese”, in turn, means Han. All other nationalities and ethnicities within each modern nation state are ignored.
Likewise, “Western” primarily means Anglophone. Nisbett starts with a tepid discussion of “Greek thought” — better described as Athenian and Aristotelian thought as received through the Italian Renaissance and English Premoderns, again ignoring hundreds of distinct ideological lineages — and jumps to the Italian merchant states and then again into the late 20th century.
So, it seems Nisbett means, by the words “Asian” and “Western”, those stereotypes that already have a prevalent hold on armchair psychology. There’s nothing revealing here, all bias reinforcement, and literally billions of other peoples cultural and psychological experiences are completely ignored.
I do NOT mean to indict Nisbett for being insufficiently woke. He had a good opportunity in this book to highlight some important cultural differences and compare them with a common human description of psychology— but he went pretty hard down the boring old, meaningless road of “Westerners are individualist and Asians are collectivists” instead
marystevens's review
4.0
The Korean graduate student I am tutoring in ESL recommended this excellent summary of the cross cultural psychological research on how people think. East Asians and Americans may be born with the same gray matter but we think in fundamentAlly different ways. East Asians see context, relationships and change where we focus on objects, characteristics and logic. Interestingly enough, this has been true since the time of Aristotle and Confucius. Dr Nesbit, President of the American Psychological Assn. sees hope in the meeting of East and West.
wellington299's review
3.0
As someone who lives in the between the words of Western and Asian thought, I had to get my hands on this book. This book had some wonderful material but could have used some just never had that WOW moment where something just clicked. It's really a shame because this topic is really just up my alley.
The difference can be summarized as follows: Eastern thought tends to be more holistic, cyclical, and relationship-oriented. While Western thought tends to be more modular, linear, and object-oriented.
The book (unintentionally?) aims for a higher-brow audience who would appreciate a more PhD vocabulary and writing style. I found it off-putting. Though I don't think the authors intentionally wrote it that way, it's just the way they think. Perhaps, they should write a book on PhD thought process vs. common thought process.
brilliancee's review
2.0
Some interesting ideas proposed and certainly opens my eyes to how the other half lives but very repetitive and research parameters seemed quite narrow and left great room for inaccuracies.
s_books's review against another edition
2.0
The topic of this book is quite interesting but the way the book goes through it is at best confusing. Nisbett does not step away from his social psychology background far enough into laymen's terms to make the book understandable; if not a Ph.D, it certainly feels like you need a Master's degree in some sort of research field to even begin to understand it. The chapter on the social life of Easterners vs. Westerners may be the most understandable but that may be because it is also the chapter that would probably be most relevant to most people, human interactions within the "other" culture.
storycraft's review
4.0
This book is a cognitive psychologist’s look at how differences between Asian (mainly Chinese) and Western (mainly American) thinking influence what Nisbett refers to as “habits of mind.” He asserts that differences between Asian and Western “habits of mind” are essentially cognitive. With reference to the intellectual traditions of Aristotelian and Confucian logic, cognitive psychology experiments performed by both Asian and Western researchers, and several of his own experiments, Nisbett claims that, “[p:]eople hold the beliefs they do because of the way they think and they think the way they do because of the nature of the societies they live in” (201).
Nisbett’s argument relies experiments in four areas: foreground vs. background focus, cause and effect relationships, category forming, and laws of logic. When presented with a complicated image, Westerners tend to focus on foreground objects whereas Asians tend to focus on the background, taking a wide-angle view. When explaining the actions of a student who shot his advisor, fellow students, bystanders, and finally himself, Western newspapers attributed his behavior to personal factors whereas Asian newspapers described situational factors as the cause. When describing the relationships between objects, Westerners tend to categorize based on attributes (i.e. animal) whereas Asians tend to categorize based on relationships (i.e. cows eat grass). These differences indicate a Western object focus and an Asian relationship focus. Westerners tend to see a world filled with objects belonging to stable categories and events that can be explained with cause and effect reasoning. Asians tend to see a world filled with objects and events existing in complex and ever-changing relationship to other objects and events. Western logic is based on firm laws of non-contradiction whereas Asian logic seeks to harmonize seeming opposites.
For Nisbett, the most important conclusion in this book is that universal thought patterns do not exist. This finding questions the usefulness of psychological tools such as “culturally neutral” intelligence tests. It also responds to the debate about the nature of culture and its influence on society and politics, especially as outlined in books like Francis Fukayama’s The End of History and the Last Man, which claims that cultures are converging, and in Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations, which claims that cultural differences are insurmountable. Nisbett wisely avoids the question of culture by limiting his discussion to “habits of mind.” However, his reference to Fukayama and Huntington can be read as an indirect comment on the culture question. Nisbett’s position is that Asian and Western cognition is fundamentally different. However, the convergence argument may have some grounding if it is decoupled from westernization.
The Geography of Thought is a well-written book with an ease of style that conceals complex arguments, especially in the sections about categorization and logic. Nisbett’s approach takes an experimental approach instead of describing cultural differences using observation and tradition. He also includes interesting and provocative observations on the ways that Asian Americans and biculturals fall in-between Asian and Western thought unless they are primed to answer one way or the other.
Nisbett’s argument relies experiments in four areas: foreground vs. background focus, cause and effect relationships, category forming, and laws of logic. When presented with a complicated image, Westerners tend to focus on foreground objects whereas Asians tend to focus on the background, taking a wide-angle view. When explaining the actions of a student who shot his advisor, fellow students, bystanders, and finally himself, Western newspapers attributed his behavior to personal factors whereas Asian newspapers described situational factors as the cause. When describing the relationships between objects, Westerners tend to categorize based on attributes (i.e. animal) whereas Asians tend to categorize based on relationships (i.e. cows eat grass). These differences indicate a Western object focus and an Asian relationship focus. Westerners tend to see a world filled with objects belonging to stable categories and events that can be explained with cause and effect reasoning. Asians tend to see a world filled with objects and events existing in complex and ever-changing relationship to other objects and events. Western logic is based on firm laws of non-contradiction whereas Asian logic seeks to harmonize seeming opposites.
For Nisbett, the most important conclusion in this book is that universal thought patterns do not exist. This finding questions the usefulness of psychological tools such as “culturally neutral” intelligence tests. It also responds to the debate about the nature of culture and its influence on society and politics, especially as outlined in books like Francis Fukayama’s The End of History and the Last Man, which claims that cultures are converging, and in Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations, which claims that cultural differences are insurmountable. Nisbett wisely avoids the question of culture by limiting his discussion to “habits of mind.” However, his reference to Fukayama and Huntington can be read as an indirect comment on the culture question. Nisbett’s position is that Asian and Western cognition is fundamentally different. However, the convergence argument may have some grounding if it is decoupled from westernization.
The Geography of Thought is a well-written book with an ease of style that conceals complex arguments, especially in the sections about categorization and logic. Nisbett’s approach takes an experimental approach instead of describing cultural differences using observation and tradition. He also includes interesting and provocative observations on the ways that Asian Americans and biculturals fall in-between Asian and Western thought unless they are primed to answer one way or the other.