The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently - and Why

by Richard E. Nisbett

“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 behavior of objects.”

If it’s possible to produce marked changes in the way adults think, it certainly seemed possible that indoctrination into distinctive habits of thought from birth could result in very large cultural differences in habits of thought.

Westerners have a strong interest in categorization, which helps them to know what rules to apply to the objects in question, and formal logic plays a role in problem solving. East Asians, in contrast, attend to objects in their broad context. The world seems more complex to Asians than to Westerners, and understanding events always requires consideration of a host of factors that operate in relation to one another in no simple, deterministic way. Formal logic plays little role in problem solving. In fact, the person who is too concerned with logic may be considered immature.

First, that members of different cultures differ in their “metaphysics,” or fundamental beliefs about the nature of the world. Second, that the characteristic thought processes of different groups differ greatly. Third, that the thought processes are of a piece with beliefs about the nature of the world: People use the cognitive tools that seem to make sense—given the sense they make of the world.

The collective or interdependent nature of Asian society is consistent with Asians’ broad, contextual view of the world and their belief that events are highly complex and determined by many factors. The individualistic or independent nature of Western society seems consistent with the Western focus on particular objects in isolation from their context and with Westerners’ belief that they can know the rules governing objects and therefore can control the objects’ behavior.

The social practices promote the worldviews; the worldviews dictate the appropriate thought processes; and the thought processes both justify the worldviews and support the social practices.

The Greeks, more than any other ancient peoples, and in fact more than most people on the planet today, had a remarkable sense of personal agency—the sense that they were in charge of their own lives and free to act as they chose. One definition of happiness for the Greeks was that it consisted of being able to exercise their powers in pursuit of excellence in a life free from constraints.

One definition of happiness for the Greeks was that it consisted of being able to exercise their powers in pursuit of excellence in a life free from constraints.

Homer makes it clear that a man is defined almost as much by his ability to debate as by his prowess as a warrior.

Leisure meant for the Greeks, among other things, the freedom to pursue knowledge. The merchants of Athens were happy to send their sons to school so that they could indulge their curiosity.

The Chinese counterpart to Greek agency was harmony. Every Chinese was first and foremost a member of a collective, or rather of several collectives—the clan, the village, and especially the family. The

For the early Confucians, there can be no me in isolation, to be considered abstractly: I am the totality of roles I live in relation to specific others … Taken collectively, they weave, for each of us, a unique pattern of personal identity, such that if some of my roles change, the others will of necessity change also, literally making me a different person.”

The ideal of happiness was not, as for the Greeks, a life allowing the free exercise of distinctive talents, but the satisfactions of a plain country life shared within a harmonious social network.

The chief moral system of China—Confucianism—was essentially an elaboration of the obligations that obtained between emperor and subject, parent and child, husband and wife, older brother and younger brother, and between friend and friend.

Carrying out prescribed roles—in an organized, hierarchical system—was the essence of Chinese daily life.

Individual rights in China were one’s “share” of the rights of the community as a whole, not a license to do as one pleased.

Their monophonic music reflected the Chinese concern with unity. Singers would all sing the same melody and musical instruments played the same notes at the same time. Not surprisingly, it was the Greeks who invented polyphonic music, where different instruments, and different voices, take different parts.

Chinese advances reflected a genius for practicality, not a penchant for scientific theory and investigation.

“In Confucianism there was no thought of knowing that did not entail some consequence for action.”

Though Aristotle did not grant reality to the forms, he thought of attributes as having a reality distinct from their concrete embodiments in objects.

The central, basic, sine qua non properties of an object constituted its “essence,” which was unchanging by definition, since if the essence of an object changed it was no longer the object but something else. The properties of an object that could change without changing the object’s essence were “accidental” properties.

A peculiar but important aspect of Greek philosophy is the notion that the world is fundamentally static and unchanging.

Greeks “became slaves to the linear, either-or orientation of their logic.”

The Chinese orientation toward life was shaped by the blending of three different philosophies: Taoism, Confucianism, and, much later, Buddhism. Each philosophy emphasized harmony and largely discouraged abstract speculation.

The world is constantly changing and is full of contradictions. To understand and appreciate one state of affairs requires the existence of its opposite; what seems to be true now may be the opposite of what it seems to be

The principle of yin-yang is the expression of the relationship that exists between opposing but interpenetrating forces that may complete one another, make each comprehensible, or create the conditions for altering one into the other.

To shrink something You need to expand it first To weaken something You need to strengthen it first To abolish something You need to flourish it first To take something You need to give it first

the dominant themes of nature and the rural life are much more associated with Taoism than with Confucianism, and the importance of the family and educational and economic advancement are more integral to Confucianism.

There is an adage holding that every Chinese is a Confucianist when he is successful and a Taoist when he is a failure.

A key idea is the notion of resonance. If you pluck a string on an instrument, you produce a resonance in another string. Man, heaven, and earth create resonances in each other.

The Chinese are disinclined to use precisely defined terms or categories in any arena, but instead use expressive, metaphoric language.

For the Chinese, the background scheme for the nature of the world was that it was a mass of substances rather than a collection of discrete objects.

“Their universe was a continuous medium or matrix within which interactions of things took place, not by the clash of atoms, but by radiating influences.”

Chinese social life was interdependent and it was not liberty but harmony that was the watchword—the harmony of humans and nature for the Taoists and the harmony of humans with other humans for the Confucians.

objectivity arose from subjectivity—the recognition that two minds could have different representations of the world and that the world has an existence independent of either representation.