Cult.&cog.ii
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This document discusses differences in cognition and logic between Eastern and Western cultures. It provides examples showing that Eastern cultures, such as Chinese culture, place more emphasis on experience and context compared to Western cultures that place more emphasis on logic and abstraction. Studies discussed found that Eastern participants were more likely than Western participants to consider contextual factors and relationships between concepts, rather than relying strictly on logical reasoning. The document analyzes how these differences influence judgments, decision making, attention, memory, and narrative storytelling between Eastern and Western cultures.
Cult.&cog.ii
- 1. Culture and Cognition: Part II Psychology 203 Cultural Psychology Winter, 2005
- 2. Logic East and West the most striking difference between the traditions at the two ends of the civilized word is in the destiny of logic. For the West, logic has been central and the thread of transmission has never snapped Philosopher Angus Graham ...it is precisely because the Chinese mind is so rational that it refuses to become rationalistic and to separate form from content. Philosopher Hsu-Shien Liu "The aim of the Chinese classical education has always been the cultivation of the reasonable man as the model of culture. An educated man should, above all, be a reasonable being, who is always characterized by his common sense, his love of moderation and restraint, and his hatred of abstract theories and logical extremes. Historian Lin Yutang To argue with logical consistency ... may not only be resented but also be regarded as immature. Anthropologist Nobihuro Nagashima
- 3. Cognitive Differences: Logic vs. Experience Norenzayan, et al.: Typicality vs. logic All birds have ulnar arteries Do sparrows have ulnar arteries? Do penguins have ulnar arteries?
- 4. Convincingness Judgments as a Function 9 of Typicality 8.5 Typical Atypica 8 l Convincingness 7.5 7 6.5 6 5.5 5 European Asian Korean American American
- 5. Cognitive Differences: Logic vs. Experience Norenzayan, et al.: Plausibility vs. logic All animals with fur hibernate Rabbits do not hibernate Rabbits are not animals with fur
- 6. Valid Arguments 100 Percent Valid Responses 95 Believable 90 Unbelievable 85 80 75 70 65 60 55 European Korean American
- 7. The Socratic Effect East and West Socratic effect: asking people their beliefs about the probability of logically related propositions results in their coming into alignment when retested Norenzayan & Kim (2002) Korean and American Ss The price of dining out will increase If stricter health codes for restaurants will increase the cost of hiring new staff, the price of dining out will increase Stricter health codes for restaurants will increase the cost of hiring new staff Koreans showed less Socratic effect than Americans Only found for negative conclusions
- 8. PRINCIPLES OF FORMAL LOGIC 1. Identity: A = A 2. Noncontradiction: A not A 3. Excluded middle: A or not A
- 9. Eastern Dialectism 1. Principle of change: Reality is a process of change What is currently true will shortly be false 2. Principle of contradiction: Contradiction is the dynamic underlying change Because change is constant, contradiction is constant 3. Principle of relationships (or holism): The whole is more than the sum of its parts Parts are meaningful only in relation to the whole The Tao
- 11. Proverb Types Dialectical Proverbs: "Beware of your friends not your enemies, "Too humble is half proud Non-dialectical Proverbs: "One against all is certain to fall "For example is no proof"
- 12. American and Chinese Preferences for Dialectical and non- Dialectical Yiddish Proverbs American 5 C hinese 4 Rating Scale 3 2 1 N on-dialectical Dialectical Type of P roverbs
- 13. Conflicts to Resolve Mother-daughter conflict: Mary, Phoebe, and Julie all have daughters. Each mother has held a set of values which has guided her efforts to raise her daughter. Now the daughters have grown up, and each of them is rejecting many of her mother's values. How did it happen and what should they do? School-fun conflict: Kent, James, and Matt are college juniors. They are feeling very frustrated about their three years of routine tests, paper assignments, and grades. They complain that going through this process has taken its toll, undermining the fun of learning. How did it happen and what should they do?
- 14. Percent of Participants Preferring Dialectical Resolution 80 American Chinese 60 Percent (%) 40 20 0 M other-Daughter School-Fun TYPE OF CONFLICTS
- 15. Why Was Aristotle Wrong about Gravity? Argument 1 Aristotle believed that the heavier a body is, the faster it falls to the ground. However, such an assumption might be false. Suppose that we have two bodies, a heavy one called H and a light one called L. Under Aristotle's assumption H will fall faster than L. Now suppose that H and L are joined together, with H on top of L. Now what happens? Well, L + H is heavier than H so by the initial assumption it should fall faster than H alone. But in the joined body L + H , L and H will each tend to fall just as fast as before they were joined, so L will act as a brake on H and L + H will fall slower than H alone. Hence it follows from the initial assumption that L + H will fall both faster and slower than H alone. Since this is absurd the initial assumption must be false. Argument 2 Aristotle believed that the heavier a body is, the faster it falls to the ground. However, such an assumption might be false because this assumption is based on a belief that the physical object is free from any influences of other contextual factors (perfect condition), which is impossible in reality. Suppose that we have two bodies, a heavy one called H and a light one called L. If we put two of them in two different conditions, such as H in windy weather (W) and L in quiet weather (Q), now what happens? Well, the weights of the body, H or L, would not make them fall fast or slow. Instead, the weather conditions, W or Q, would make a difference. Since these kinds of contextual influences always exist, we conclude that the initial assumption must be false.
- 16. Figure 4. Percent of American and Chinese Participants Preferring Dialectical Arguments American 80 Chinese 60 Percentage (%) 40 20 0 Persuasiveness Liking Persuasiveness Liking Argument for Argument against Existence of God Aristotelian Physics
- 17. Contradictory Statements Statement 1A: A social psychologist studied young adults and asserted that those who feel close to their families have more satisfying social relationships. Statement 1B: A developmental psychologist studied adolescent children and asserted that those children who were less dependent on their parents and had weaker family ties were generally more mature. Statement 2A: A sociologist who surveyed college students from 100 universities claimed that there is a high correlation among college female students between smoking and being skinny. Statement 2B: A biologist who studied nicotine addiction asserted that heavy doses of nicotine often lead to becoming overweight.
- 18. American Participants Ratings of Plausibility in Both "A or B Conditions" and "A and B Condition" M ore plausible Less plausible 7 Average Ratings of plausibility 6 5 4 3 A or B A and B Condition
- 19. Chinese Participants Ratings of Plausibility in Both "A or B Conditions" and "A and B Condition" M ore plausible Less plausible 7 Average Ratings of Plausibility 6 5 4 3 A or B A and B Condition
- 20. Agreement with Propositions About personality trait opposites: How polite are you, how rude are you? How outgoing are you, how shy are you? About statements opposite in implication: The more one knows, the less one believes, or The more one knows, the more one believes A persons character is his destiny or A persons character is not his destiny
- 21. If Asians are Illogical, Why are They Better in Math than Americans? Asians not illogical, theyre just less likely to use logic if: Experience contradicts conclusion Conclusions are undesirable A resolution to a seeming contradiction is sought When none of these true, Asians as logical as Am. Westerners can go overboard with logic Asians work harder in math -- now
- 22. Is it Language that Does the Job? Generic noun phrases more common in Indo-European languages In Chinese, no difference between squirrels eat nuts this squirrel is eating the nut Only context can tell Indo-European languages can turn any property into noun white whiteness Western middle class parents decontextualize: doggie
- 23. Language, cont. Western languages subject-prominent It is raining Asian languages topic-prominent In Japanese: This place, skiing is good In Japanese (and formerly Chinese): I depends on relationship: Colleague, spouse, old college friends, child Western grammar agentic: he dropped it Eastern grammar: It fell from him or fell In English: more tea? In Chinese: Drink more?
- 24. Figure 1 5 4 Chinese Language 3 English Language 2 1 0 -1 -2 -3 -4 PRC Chinese PRC and TW HK & S European in PRC Chinese in USA Chinese in US Americans
- 25. Attention to Object vs. Field Abel & Hsu (1949) Rorschach whole card responses Ji, Peng & Nisbett (2000) Rod and Frame Test (field dependence) Covariation detection Masuda & Nisbett (2001) Attention to salient object vs. background Binding of object and field Masuda & Nisbett (2005) Change blindness
- 26. Rod and Frame Side View
- 27. Rod and Frame Subjects View
- 28. RFT: Errors and Confidence European Americans Chinese Errors on RFT Confidence Judgments 3.5 8 Perceived Performance 3 7.5 2.5 7 Errors 2 6.5 1.5 6 1 0.5 5.5 0 5 Non-control Control Mode Mode
- 30. Covariation Judgments 70 American Chinese 60 Covariation Judgments 50 40 30 20 Non-control Mode Control Mode
- 31. Confidence Judgments American 90 Chinese Confidence Judgments 80 70 60 50 Non-control Mode Control Mode
- 32. Seeing the Object and the Field (Masuda & Nisbett, 2001) Phase 1: Recall Task Participants 41 American participants at the University of Michigan and 44 Japanese participants at Kyoto University, Japan.
- 33. Phase 2: Recognition Task Fish with Original Fish with Fish with Novel Background No Background Background
- 34. Previously Seen Objects (Japan) 78 76 74 72 70 68 66 64 62 60 Original No Novel Background Background Background
- 35. Previously Seen Objects (USA) 78 76 74 72 70 68 66 64 62 60 Original No Novel Background Background Background
- 36. Change Detection Japanese and American Ss Shown pairs of animated vignettes Asked to report differences across pair Do Japanese see more contextual (background and relational) changes? Do Americans see more focal object changes?
- 39. Changes in Scene Across Two Vignettes
- 40. American City
- 41. Japanese City
- 42. American Farm
- 43. Japanese Farm
- 44. Changes Detected in Objects and Context 4 Number of detected changes USA JPN 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 Focal Object Contextual Information Information
- 45. Changes Detected in U.S. and Japanese Scenes US scenes JPN scenes 4.5 Number of detected changes 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 Focal Object Contextual Information Information
- 46. Affordances in Japan and U.S.: Miyamoto and Nisbett Take pictures in US and Japanese cities New York and Tokyo Ann Arbor and Hikone Two villages Compare complexity of comparable scenes e.g. in front of post office, school
- 47. Electronics District Tokyo
- 48. New York 2
- 49. Ratings of Complexity Number of objects Ambiguity of boundaries Degree to which parts of scene are invisible Orderliness vs. chaos
- 50. Medium Size Japanese City
- 51. Schematic
- 52. Number of Physical Features Found by Program Number of Objects Defined at Two Sizes
- 53. Quilts
- 54. Framed Line Task: Relative Task Absolute Task Target Stimulus
- 55. Results: Experiment 1 8 Absolute Task 7 Relative Task 6 Mean Absolute Error (mm) 5 4 3 2 1 0 Japanese Americans Culture
- 56. Eyetracking (Chua and Nisbett, 2005) Study Phase
- 57. Chinese have poorer memory for old objects in new backgrounds p = .03)
- 58. Chinese made more saccades to each picture presentation than Americans (p < .05).
- 59. Chinese made more saccades to the background than Americans (p = .003). There was no difference in number of saccades to the object.
- 60. Americans look at the object sooner than Chinese (p = .02).
- 61. Americans have longer fixations than Chinese (p = .01). Compared to Chinese, Americans also have substantially longer fixations on objects than on backgrounds (p = .02).
- 62. Esthetic Preferences: Object vs. Context Masuda, Gonzalez and Nisbett (2005) Drawings: house, person, river, tree, horizon Anticipations: more detail about background for Japanese; higher horizons for Japanese Photographs: person in some setting Anticipation: central figure larger for Americans
- 63. American, Male
- 64. East Asian (Hong Kong), male
- 65. Task 1. Studio-Sitting Model 2. Studio-Standing Model 3. Atrium-Sitting Model 4. Atrium-Standing Model American Data East Asian Data
- 66. Narrative Accounts of Events Chua and Nisbett (2005) Personal stories (e.g., my first day in school this term) Stories they read (e.g., bad day in the life of a single mother) Videos they watch (no-audio vignettes from British comedies)
- 67. Anticipations Americans would report more information about the central figure Americans would report seeing more intentionality (attempt to control events) Taiwanese would report more emotion ? Language effects for the bilingual Taiwanese?
- 68. Americans made more references to main character 14 12 10 Am 8 Twn Eng 6 Twn Man 4 2 0 Main Character Other Character(s)
- 69. Americans produced more intention statements 0.3 0.25 0.2 Am 0.15 Twn Eng Twn Man 0.1 0.05 0 Average Across Tasks
- 70. Taiwanese made more statements with emotional content 0.16 0.14 0.12 0.1 Am 0.08 Twn Eng Twn Man 0.06 0.04 0.02 0 Average Across Tasks
- 71. Are the Differences Confined to Asia vs. Europe? K端hnen, et al. (2000): Field dependence for Americans, Germans, Russians and Malaysians Knight, Varnum & Nisbett (2005): Eastern Europe vs. Western Europe Northern Italy vs. Southern Italy Middle class vs. working class
- 72. 1 0.9 0.8 Proportion of thematic pairings 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0.636 0.614 0.729 0.856 0 North, high North, low South, high South, low School, SES
- 73. Does It Matter? Medicine Science: In 90s, 44 US Dissection, surgery Nobels, 1 Japanese vs. holistic practice International relations Modularization (spy plane incident) Law Human rights (lawyer/engineer ratio) contract or organism? Conflict resolution Religion Contracts: sugar & snow Blend in East Debate Religious wars rare in East Marketplace vs. Cycles vs. utopias Consensus Intellectual history S. Korea and N. Korea Rhetoric: structure of Education, Learning argument and IQ tests
- 74. Intellectual History East and West Western dichotomies Nature vs. nurture Mind vs. body Emotion vs. reason Necessary and sufficient conditions tradition in the West Quantum mechanics and Nils Bohr Object in two different places at once (!) Evolution Primatology
- 75. Intellectual History, cont.: The Continent vs. the Anglo-American Tradition Big picture ideas vs. small theories and concerns Anglo-Am philosophers: ordinary language analysis: Gettier examples Continental phil: Phenomenology Existentialism Structuralism Post-structuralism Post-modernism Marxism Sociology: Comte and Weber Psychology: Freud, Piaget, Lewin, Heider, historical- cultural psych vs. Skinner
- 76. Intellectual History, cont.: Linear Utopias of the West Platos Republic Puritanism, Quakerism, Shakers Mormonism American and French Revolutions Communism, fascism Steady, linear progress Once attained, state is permanent Reached through human effort Usually egalitarian Usually based on a few extreme assumptions about human nature
- 77. Education, Learning and IQ Testing Kim (2002) We talk, therefore we think? Cattell Culture Fair IQ test (Park et al., 2005) Spatial tests of IQ Liu and Nisbett (2005) State-dependent learning Watanabe (1998): Japanese children in American schools
- 78. Cattell Culture Fair type item
- 80. Social Context Change Effects on Word Recall (Liu & Nisbett, 2005) 9 8 7 6 5 No Change 4 Social Change 3 2 1 0 European-Americans East Asians
- 81. Manipulating Culture-Specific Cognition Priming manipulations: Higgins and Bargh Hong, Chiu, & Kung (1997): culture-primed Hong Kong Ss Peng & Knowles (2003): priming Asian vs. American identities K端hnen et al. (2001): I vs. we and field dep. for Am.; Cha & Schwarz (2005) for Koreans K端hnen & Oyserman (2002): I vs. we and memory for context in which objects were seen Masuda & Nisbett (2005): affordances of environment Miyamoto, Masuda & Nisbett (2005): priming with Asian vs. American scenes and memory for objects vs. contexts Predict Leu, Liu, & Nisbett (2005)
- 82. Changes Detected in U.S. and Japanese Scenes US scenes JPN scenes 4.5 Number of detected changes 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 Focal Object Contextual Information Information
- 83. Degree of Overlap of Distributions