PSYC 307 - Cognition and Perception
Holistic thinking involves (4)
- An orientation to the entire scene - Attending to the relations among objects - Predicting an object's behaviour on a basis of thsoe relationships - Relies on associative thought
Where did these attribution reasonings originate from?
- Classical Greek and Confucians Chinese thought - Acceptance for contradiction vs Aristotle's Laws
Analytic thinking involves (4)
- Separating objects from each other - Breaking down objects to their component parts - Using rules to explain and predict an object's behaviour - Relies on abstract thought
Which is more common, absolute or egocentric space representation?
Absolute is common in most subsistence societies around the world. Even for bilingual people who can use bother, prefer absolute way Chimps don't use egocentric Egocentric is a recent development
Which researcher provided a lot of evidence for holistic and analytic thinking
Richard Nisbett
Study - contradictory acceptance with two arguments (one logical and one contradictory), shown one argument or both
Americans who were shown both arguments showed counternormative reasoning in which they were even more convinced that the strong argument was correct compared to just hearing the strong argument Chinese saw the strong argument as less plausible than if they heard a contradictory argument. However, they also showed a counternormative response in which they saw the weak argument being more plausible if it was paired with a contradictory argument
Two basic systems for reasoning
Analytic and holistic thinking
Numerical cogntiion in the absence of words
Anything after 3 is learned Culture that does not have a word beyond "two", only accurate to numbers up to 3 or 4, but had a general understanding of magnitude Recent studies have shown that tribes without number words think in magnitude - logarithmically
Classical Greek and Confucian Chinese though
Aristotle: world consists of discrete, unchanging objects operating by universal laws Confucius: harmony, interconnectedness, and change *Recent research has found that holistic thinking exists everywhere outside the Western world
How do independent cultures think of others?
As being fundamentally independent from each other, and composed of their component parts. The physical world can be thought of in the same way
How do interdepedent cultures think of others?
Attend to the relations among people. Generalized to an attention of relations among objects in one's environment
Tolerance for contradiction
Chinese show a relative acceptance for contradiction - termed "naive dialectism" Based on the view that everything is connected and constantly in flux (Yin/Yang) "Belief A" is always changing to its opposite, "Belief Not A", so no logical contradiction Artistotle had 3 principles, where according to this perspective, there cannot be any contradiction (you must be looking at it wrong)
Study - thinking out loud with Raven's Matrices. What was the dependent variable?
Did 10 Q's silent, then did 10 Q's while thinking out loud. Dependent variable was how many IQ questions they answered correctly while thinking out loud or saying the alphabet compared to silent questions. Euro: relatively unaffected whether thinking out loud or silent. But performed worse when saying alphabet Asians: perform worse when thinking out loud, but unaffected when saying alphabet Suggests that Asian's thoughts are non-verbal, where Euro's are thinking verbally about the task even when silent
Explaining how people's behaviours by attending to their personal characteristics is
Dispositional Attribution
How are attitudes toward contradiction evident towards the self
East Asians more likely to offer apparently contradictory self-description: "I'm both shy and outgoing"
Study - impoverished odor lexicon
English has few words for smell, in contrast to Jahal of Malaysia When given series of colors and odors to identify, Americans reach much more agreement among each other for color but not for smell. Jahal is around thes ame for both
Talking and thinking (inner monologue) with analytic and holistic thinking
Holistic thinking should be impaired more by saying one's thought out loud because there are multiple connections that are simultaneously relevent *Talking out loud is an analytic process because one one idea can be said at one time
Novelty and Usefulness with culture
Individualism promotes novelty Collectivism promotes useful ideas When Koreans and Dutch were motivated to do well, Dutch came up with more original ideas and Koreans came up with more useful ideas
Whorfian hypothesis (strong hypothesis)
Language determines thought - largely rejected
Weaker version of Whorfian hypothesis
Language influences thought
Aristotle's 3 principles
Law of Identity: A=A Law of Excluded Middle: A=B or A=not B Law of Noncontradiction: A=not A
Innate way of number thinking
Logarithmically, participants placed the middle of 1-10 at about a 3 rather than a 5 Young children also show logarithmic thinking - suggests that linear thinking might be culturally learned
Cultural difference in webpages
NA webpages have fewer links and words than East Asian ones, since East Asians can attend to busier scenes
Value of spoken word in Westerners and East Asians
NA: freedom of speech, knowledge to emerge through spoken word. Westerners value spoken word more Asia: "He who knows does not speak, he who speak does not know", emphasize meditation and prayer
How has creativity been operationalized?
Need to be both 1) Novel and 2) Useful and appropriate, so need to consider these 2 separately
Study - directional terms Dutch (english) and Guugu Ymithirr (cardinal terms NESW)
Shown objects, then asked to rearrange in the different room where they were facing the other way (South instead of North). GY people set it the opposite way compared to Dutch
Study - Blue green stimuli
Shown triad of colors - one the middle and the other two were equidistant in hue. Asked to say which color matched the middle one People make judgements based on whether the color of the chips crossed boundaries of the color terms in their own language than in other languages
Attribution tendencies with age for NA and Indians
Similar results at age 8 As Americans got older they made more dipositional attributions, but not situational ones - show fundamental attribution error As Indians got older,they made more situational attributions, but not dispositional ones - show reverse fundamental attribution error
Explaining how people's behaviours by attending to their contextual variables is
Situational Attribution
Facial recognition and thinking out loud
Studies find that when people verbally describe a face it impairs their recognition of the face (since a face is holistic - interferes with our verbalization)
Fundamental Attribution Error
Tendency for people to place an undue emphasis on internal characteristics (personality) to explain someone else's behavior in a given situation rather than considering the situation's external variables
Are Western or Eastern people more likely to develop mental illness?
Western
Cultural differences in people's predictions about the future
Westerners view the future as linear, where Asians see it as more cyclical, where good times might be followed by bad times
Study - Field independence/dependence in backgrounds and wolf in picture
When backgrounds scenes are switched, East Asians perform worse - see the scene as more bound together
Languages and gender of objects
When learning to associate names with objects, Spanish and German (both use M/F for objects) find it easier to remember the names that fit the gender of their objects