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A review by aliciaparry
The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently by Richard Nisbett
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.”