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