Psyc 307: Chapter 8

First evidence of cultural differences (analytic vs holistic) in 1949?

Rorschach ink blot test: European Americans more likely to describe one part of the ink blot, whereas Chinese Americans more likely to describe the whole ink blot

in 1984, Miller attempted to learn the age at which different ways of understanding peoples behaviors emerges across cultures by recruiting children (8, 11, 15) and university students from India and the US, and asking them to 1) describe a situation when someone had behaved in a pro social or deviant manner, and 2) explain why they had behaved that way. Describe the findings.

8 year olds gave similar responses b/t both cultures. As Americans got older, they were more likely to make dispositional attributioins whereas situational attributions did not change. As Indians got older, they made more situational attributions whereas dispositional attributions did not change. American adults showed clear evidence for fundamental attribution error. Indian adults did not show any, but showed clear evidence for reverse fundamental attribution error b/c they tended to focus more on the situation than on the disposition.

What are saccades, and who is more likely to do them when looking at a scene?

Extremely quick eye movements that shift people's gaze from one fixation to another. Compared to Americans, Chinese were more systematically scanning the entire scene (Chua, Boland, & Nisbett)

What are the 2 ways of attending to the world?

Analytic thinking and Holistic thinking

How does analytic and holistic orientation affect how people reason, and subsequently, solve problems?

Analytic thinking suggests that they will apply rules and laws when trying to make sense of a situation. Holistic thinking suggests that they will look for evidence of similarity among events or of temporal contiguity of events.

Where do analytic and holistic thinkers place their attention?

Analytic: more likely to focus their attention on separate parts of a scene--those parts that represent discrete objects of interest Holistic: more likely to direct their attention more broadly across an entire scene

Explain how analytical and holistic thinking differ in the flower association exercise.

Analytical: leads you to conclude Flower A belongs to Group 2, because the only common structure all flowers have is a straight stem, and that Flower B belongs to Group 1 because all flowers have a curved stem. Rule judgement. Holistic: leads you to conclude that Flower A belongs in Group 1 and Flower B belongs in Group 2 because you look at overall similarity in characteristics (none of which apply uniformly). Family resemblance judgement.

Holistic thinking traces back to which ancient civilization?

Ancient China: Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism: harmony, connectedness, change (knew about magnetism, acoustic resonance, and moon's role in tides long before Greeks did)

Analytic thinking traces back to which ancient civilization?

Ancient Greece: Aristotle, formal logic system, searched for truth according to abstract rules that existed independent of observations

What is analytic thinking?

Characterized by a focus on objects and their attributes. Objects are perceived as existing independently from their contexts, and instead understood in terms of their component parts. A set of fixed abstract rules used to predict and explain behavior of these objects. (more common in Western cultures)

What is holistic thinking?

Characterized by and orientation to the context as a whole. Represents an associative way of thinking, attends to relations among objects and among objects and their surrounding context. Emphasizes knowledge gained through experience rather than application of fixed rules. (East Asian)

What was Masuda's and colleagues explanation for differences between Western and Eastern art?

Differences reflect some fundamental differences in basic cognitive and perceptual processes that exist between these two cultures.

Which culture paints horizons significantly higher? What is the explanation for this?

East Asian: higher horizon calls attention to the depth of the setting and allows for all the different objects and places within a scene to be seen in relation to one another. Naturally direct attention to these relations

How do Analytic thinkers tend to explain the behaviors of others? What is the term that describes this? Who tends to do this?

Explain people's behaviors in terms of their underlying dispositions (personality traits); dispositional attribution ;Westerners

How do Holistic thinkers tend to explain the behaviors of others? What is the term that describes this? Who tends to do this?

Explain peoples behaviors in terms of contextual variables (considering the individuals relations with his or her context); situational attribution ;East Asians

what is a high context culture and a low context culture?

HCC: people are deeply involved with each other, and this leads them to have much shared information that guides behavior. There are clear and appropriate ways of behaving in each situation that are widely shared and understood. Can be less explicit in what they say because so much information is in common and can be inferred. LCC: Relatively less involvement among individuals, less shared info to guide behavior. Therefore it is necessary for people to communicate in more explicit detail, as others are less able to fill in the gaps.

What are some of the mentioned consequences of the cultural difference in the way people explain the behavior of others?

How people make sense of illegal/harmful behavior. For example mass murder described in the papers. Americans much more dispositional excuses, Chinese made more references to the situations that provoked the accused.

What is change blindness, and what 2 findings emerged from the study assessing it?

Inability to detect change in a scene. The Japanese noticed more of the changes to background than the Americans (reflects their greater holistic attentional tendencies) Both Americans and Japanese were more likely to identify the changes in the background when they had been primed with picture of Japanese scenes than when primed with American scenes.

When asked to draw a picture including a house, tree, river, person, and horizon, Japanese participants did what?

Included 75% more contextual objects than the Americans and drew a significantly higher horizon.

Evidence for field dependency vs field independency associations with analytic and holistic thinking?

More outgoing people for field dependent (Witkin). Farmers who live in societies where they must coordinate their actions with others are more field dependent than those who hunt and gather or herd (Witkin & Berry). Religious training in Calvinism (emphasizes independence of individuals) more field independent than atheists of catholics/jews (Colzato) Rod and Frame task: industrialized societies do better, East Asions especially poor

What is field independence and what type of thinker is better at this?

Separating objects from their background fields, analytic thinkers

When comparing number of objects in scenes from Japan and the States, what occurred? (Miyamoto & Nisbett)

Significantly more objects in Japanese pictures than in American pictures. Scenes Japanese and Americans see on a daily basis vary in complexity

Is the fundamental attribution error made by everyone?

Some other cultures (ex Balinese) do not tend to conceive people's behaviors in terms of underlying dispositions, but instead see them as emerging out of the roles they have (Geertz). Schweder and Bourne found Indians will say "she brings cakes to my family on festival days" whereas Americans will say "she is friendly"

Define Fundamental attribution error.

The tendency to ignore situational information while focusing on dispositional information. When one sees a person acting, they assume they are doing so because of their underlying dispositions, and tend to ignore the situational constraints that might be driving their behavior.

What is field dependence, and what type of thinker is better at this?

View objects as bound to their backgrounds, holistic thinkers

what is categorical perception [of color]?

We tend to perceive stimuli in categorical terms, perceive them as belonging to separate and discreet categories, even though the stimuli may gradually differ from each other along a continuum.

Describe the findings of Peng & Nisbett 1999 regarding contradicting claims about smoking inducing weight gain and loss.

Weight loss was more convincing than weight gain overall. Americans who encountered both claims were more convinced that weight loss was the right answer (thus denying that it exists). Chinese when shown both became less convinced of weight loss, and more convinced of weight gain (balanced out and accepted both were probably true).

Which culture displays larger figures? What is the explanation for this?

Western: focus one's attention on the portrayed individual, dominates the scene and stands apart from the background.

What is naive dialecticism?

acceptance of contradiction

creative thinking discussion is based on?

novelty vs. usefulness incremental vs. breakthrough innovation

define anthropocentric

project qualities of people onto animals