The Geography of Thought

When Richard Nisbett showed an animated underwater scene to his American students, they zeroed in on a big fish swimming among smaller fish. Japanese subjects, on the other hand, made observations about the background environment...and the different "seeings" are a clue to profound underlying cognitive differences between Westerners and East Asians.

As Professor Nisbett shows in The Geography of Thought people actually think - and even see - the world differently, because of differing ecologies, social structures, philosophies, and educational systems that date back to ancient Greece and China, and that have survived into the modern world. As a result, East Asian thought is "holistic" - drawn to the perceptual field as a whole, and to relations among objects and events within that field.

By comparison to Western modes of reasoning, East Asian thought relies far less on categories, or on formal logic; it is fundamentally dialectic, seeking a "middle way" between opposing thoughts. By contrast, Westerners focus on salient objects or people, use attributes to assign them to categories, and apply rules of formal logic to understand their behaviour.

“An important, research-based challenge to the assumption widespread among cognitive scientists that thinking the world over is fundamentally the same. - Howard Gardner, Harvard University, author of Frames of Mind: Theories of Multiple Intelligences This book may mark the beginning of a new front in the science wars. Nisbett, an eminent psychologist, contends that "human cognition is not everywhere the same"-that those brought up in Western and East Asian cultures think differently from one another in scientifically measurable ways. Such a contention pits his work squarely against evolutionary psychology (as articulated by Steven Pinker and others) and cognitive science, which assume all appreciable human characteristics are "hard wired." Writing dispassionately yet with engagement, Nisbett explains the differences as "an inevitable consequence of using different tools to understand the world." If his explanation turns out to be generally accepted, it means a big victory for memes in their struggle with genes. - Publishers Weekly Cultural psychology has come of age and Richard Nisbett's book will surely become one of the canonical texts of this provocative discipline. The Geography of Thought challenges a fundamental premise of the Western Enlightenment - the idea that modes of thought are, ought to be, or will become the same wherever you go - East or West, North or South - in the world. I have long been following Richard Nisbett's groundbreaking work on culture and cognition. After so many fascinating experiments, challenging hypotheses, and passionate debates, it was a great time for Nisbett to share his ideas and findings with a wider public. The Geography of Thought does superbly! This is another landmark book by University of Michigan psychologist Richard E. Nisbett. Nisbett shows conclusively that laboratory experiments limited to American college students or even individuals from the western hemisphere simply cannot provide an adequate understanding of how people, in general, think. The book shows that understanding of how individuals in eastern cultures think is not just nice, but necessary, if we wish to solve the problems we confront in the world today. We ignore the lessons of this book at our peril. The cultural differences in cognition, demonstrated in this ground-breaking work, are far more profound and wide-ranging than anybody in the field could have possibly imagined just a decade ago. The findings are surprising for universalists; remarkable for culturalists; and regardless, they are most thought-provoking for all students of human cognition.”

"This book may mark the beginning of a new front in the science wars. Nisbett, an eminent psychologist and co-author of a seminal Psychological Review paper on how people talk about their decision making, reports on some of his latest work in cultural psychology. He contends that "human cognition is not everywhere the same"-that those brought up in Western and East Asian cultures think differently from one another in scientifically measurable ways. Such a contention pits his work squarely against evolutionary psychology (as articulated by Steven Pinker and others) and cognitive science, which assume all appreciable human characteristics are "hard wired." Initial chapters lay out the traditional differences between Aristotle and Confucius, and the social practices that produced (and have grown out of) these differing "homeostatic approaches" to the world: Westerners tend to inculcate individualism and choice (40 breakfast cereals at the supermarket), while East Asians are oriented toward group relations and obligations ("the tall poppy is cut down" remains a popular Chinese aphorism). Next, Nisbett presents his actual experiments and data, many of which measure reaction times in recalling previously shown objects. They seem to show East Asians (a term Nisbett uses as a catch-all for Chinese, Koreans, Japanese and others) measurably more holistic in their perceptions (taking in whole scenes rather than a few stand-out objects). Westerners, or those brought up in Northern European and Anglo-Saxon-descended cultures, have a "tunnel-vision perceptual style" that focuses much more on identifying what's prominent in certain scenes and remembering it. Writing dispassionately yet with engagement, Nisbett explains the differences as "an inevitable consequence of using different tools to understand the world." If his explanation turns out to be generally accepted, it means a big victory for memes in their struggle with genes."Publishers Weekly; "Cultural psychology has come of age and Richard Nisbett's book will surely become one of the canonical texts of this provocative discipline. The Geography of Thought challenges a fundamental premise of the Western Enlightenment - the idea that modes of thought are, ought to be, or will become the same wherever you go - East or West, North or South - in the world." Richard A. Shweder, anthropologist and William Claude Reavis Professor of Human Development at the University of Chicago; "I have long been following Richard Nisbett's groundbreaking work on culture and cognition. After so many fascinating experiments, challenging hypotheses, and passionate debates, it was a great time for Nisbett to share his ideas and findings with a wider public. The Geography of Thought does superbly!" Dan Sperber, author of Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach; "An important, research-based challenge to the assumption widespread among cognitive scientists that thinking the world over is fundamentally the same." Howard Gardner, Harvard University, author of Frames of Mind: Theories of Multiple Intelligences; "This is another landmark book by University of Michigan psychologist Richard E. Nisbett. Nisbett shows conclusively that laboratory experiments limited to American college students or even individuals from the western hemisphere simply cannot provide an adequate understanding of how people, in general, think. The book shows that understanding of how individuals in eastern cultures think is not just nice, but necessary, if we wish to solve the problems we confront in the world today. We ignore the lessons of this book at our peril." Robert J. Sternberg, IBM Professor of Psychology and Education; Director, Center for the Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise (PACE Center), Yale University; President-Elect, American Psychological Association; "The cultural differences in cognition, demonstrated in this ground-breaking work, are far more profound and wide-ranging than anybody in the field could have possibly imagined just a decade ago. The findings are surprising for universalists; remarkable for culturalists; and regardless, they are most thought-provoking for all students of human cognition." Shinobu Kitayama, Faculty of Integrated Human Studies, Kyoto University

Richard E. Nisbett, Ph.D., has taught psychology at Yale University and the University of Michigan, where he is the Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished University Professor. He received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association, the William James Fellow Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 2002 became the first social psychologist elected to the National Academy of Sciences in a generation. The co-author of Culture of Honor and numerous other books and articles, he lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

When Richard Nisbett showed an animated underwater scene to his American students, they zeroed in on a big fish swimming among smaller fish. Japanese subjects, on the other hand, made observations about the background environment...and the different "seeings" are a clue to profound underlying cognitive differences between Westerners and East Asians. As Professor Nisbett shows in The Geography of Thought people actually think - and even see - the world differently, because of differing ecologies, social structures, philosophies, and educational systems that date back to ancient Greece and China, and that have survived into the modern world. As a result, East Asian thought is "holistic" - drawn to the perceptual field as a whole, and to relations among objects and events within that field. By comparison to Western modes of reasoning, East Asian thought relies far less on categories, or on formal logic; it is fundamentally dialectic, seeking a "middle way" between opposing thoughts. By contrast, Westerners focus on salient objects or people, use attributes to assign them to categories, and apply rules of formal logic to understand their behaviour.

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