Ch.9 Cognition and Perception
Holistic Thinking
- An orientation to the entire scene - Attending to the relations among objects - Predicting an object's behaviour on the basis of those relationships - Relies on associative thought (what connects to what else?) - Much research finds that these two very fundamental ways of thinking differ across cultures *More common in East Asian countries
Understanding Other People's Behaviours
- Analytic thinkers focusing on objects' component parts, whereas holistic thinkers consider objects' relations with the context - the same distinction can be applied to how we understand people
Comparison of Student Drawings
- East Asian students, draw a higher horizon on average than Western students - East Asian students also include more additional objects than Western students, adding additional context to the scenery
Contradiction and Attitudes Towards the Self
- East Asians are more likely than Westerners to offer apparently contradictory self-descriptions, saying, for example, that they are both shy and outgoing (see Spencer-Rodgers et al., 2004) - Westerners will tend to choose one side of the trait, and tend to reject the other side of the trait; answers are negatively correlated East Asians, in contrast, exhibit a slight positive correlation between answers - There are also cultural differences in people's predictions about the future - Westerners are more likely to view the future as unfolding in a linear way from the past; East Asians, in contrast, view change to be more cyclical, where good times might be followed by bad
Holistic Thinkers and Separating Objects Within a Scene
- Holistic thinkers perceive a scene as an integrated whole - It is difficult for them to separate objects from eachother: field dependence (view objects as bound to their backgrounds)
Comparison of Paintings in Museusm
- Horizon is higher in East Asian art, compared to Western art - Pronounced difference in portrait paintings: the ratio of face to frame is three times as large in Western art than East Asian art
Information in Web Pages (East Asians vs. North Americans)
- North American webpages have fewer words and links than comparable East Asian ones - A similar cultural difference in density of information was seen in comparison of scientific conference posters - Moreover, when given the challenge to find a particular image, East Asians perform better than North Americans in busier scenes - East Asian experience with attending more to backgrounds, and in living in busier physical spaces, is associated with better skills for finding details in a busy scene
Comparison of Photos
- Overall, very pronounced differences in how much people tended to focus on the model - Americans tend capture the focal person (higher % of face to frame ratio), whereas East Asians tend to focus more on the context and the model
Analytic Thinking
- 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 *More common in Western Cultures
Talking and Thinking
- Talking is an analytic process: we can only specify one idea at a time that is arranged in a sequence - It is difficult to discuss holistic ideas in which there are multiple connections that are simultaneously relevant • Holistic thinking should be impaired more by saying one's thoughts out loud than would analytic thinking
Recognition Accuracy for Previously Seen Animals
- Westerners performance is relatively unaffected by the background of the scene - East Asians' performance is worse if the background of the scene is switched on them - East Asians appear to see the scene as bound together in an irreducible whole - Westerners see it as a collection of parts Also, evident at Neural Level: - Americans subjects showed more activation of object-processing regions in the brain compared with the East Asians In contrast, no cultural variation was found in areas associated with processing contexts and backgrounds
Study: Koreans and Dutch (Creativeness)
- When Koreans were motivated to do well, they came up with more useful ideas - When Dutch were motivated to do well, they came up with more original ideas • East Asian cultures have more incremental innovations, whereas Western cultures produce more breakthrough ideas • Creative teams = having more diverse cultural perspectives The most creative ideas in one study were found when team members were primed with both individualistic and collectivistic ideas - and the most creative ideas in another study emerged when people were exposed to aspects of multiple cultures - Therefore, multicultural environments may indeed have an advantage for producing more creative ideas
Does Language Influence Thought?
A strong version of the Whorfian hypothesis (linguistic relativity) is that language determines thought - Without access to the right words people are unable to have certain kinds of thoughts The strong version of this hypothesis has been largely rejected (above) •The weaker version of the hypothesis is that language influences thought - Having access to certain words influences the kinds of thoughts that one has • There is lively controversy regarding the weaker version of the hypothesis • Perhaps having different languages available to you can influence your thought
Rule-Based Reasoning
Analytic thinkers tend to view the world as an operating according to a set of universal abstract rules and laws, they will apply such rules and laws when they try to make sense of a situation
Egocentric Spatial Terms and Language
Another way that languages vary is that some have egocentric spatial terms (left, right, in front of) - many languages don't have these terms - Instead, people describe in terms of cardinal directions (ie. north, east)
Nisbett (2003) Argument on Reasoning Differences
Argued that these reasoning differences reflect habits of thought dating back to classical Greek and Confucian Chinese thought: Analytic thought is evident in Aristotle's view that objects possess properties such as "gravity," and the Platonic view that the world consists of discrete unchanging objects operating by universal laws - Understanding the world as a series of discrete, unchanging objects that operate under a set of universal laws Holistic thought is evident in classical Chinese ideas of harmony, interconnectedness, and change - Ex: early Chinese discoveries of action at a distance (tides) and in Chinese medical traditions - Action at a distance: what happens at one place will likely occur at others of a similar nature, like the tides example
Understanding the Physical World
Based on how they understand the social world - Independent Cultures: people learn to think of others as being fundamentally independent from each other, and composed of their component parts - Likewise, the physical world can be understood the same way People who are socialized in an interdependent context come to learn to attend to relations among people - this is generalized to an attention of relations among objects in one's environment
Categorical Perception
Based on the idea that different color categories should affect people's categorical perception of colors - Much research has shown that we tend to perceive stimuli in categorical terms - that is, we tend to perceive stimuli as belonging to separate and discrete categories, even though the stimuli may gradually differ from each other along a continuum
Analytic Thinkers and Separating Objects from a Scene
Being able to separate objects from eachother - Field independence can be tested with a Rod and Frame task: Where a rod is inside a frame and they are both rotated - Analytic thinkers tend to show field independence
Creativity
Creativity has been operationalized as the generation of ideas that are both: 1) Novel 2) Useful and appropriate, and these need to be considered separately
Situational Attribution
Explaining people's behaviours by attending to contextual variables - Holistic, you make seek to understand behaviour by seeing how behaviour relates to the context = East Asians and other cultures as well
Dispositional Attribution
Explaining people's behaviours by attending to their personal characteristics - Analytic thinkers = Westerners Research with Westerners consistently finds that they attend more to dispositional information than situational information when explaining others; even when the situational constraints on others' behaviour is obvious
Findings when giving two arguments to Chinese and Americans
Generally, participants tended to view one argument to be more plausible than the other - Americans who received both arguments showed a counter-normative reasoning style in that they were more convinced that the stronger argument was correct when they also heard of a contradictory argument than if they had only heard the strong argument by itself In contrast, Chinese viewed a strong argument to be less plausible if they heard a contradictory argument - However, they showed a counter-normative response in viewing a weak argument as being more plausible if it was paired with a contradictory argument
Associative Reasoning
Look for evidence of events clustering together, such as a similarity among events or of temporal continguity of events
Individualism Facilitates...
Novelty • Individualism is associated with a greater motivation for uniqueness • When primed with individualism people from multiple cultures generate more novel ideas • Western artists are more likely than the average person to suffer from mental illness - not true for Chinese artists - Number of famous artist: Hemingway, Van Gogh
Study with Anti/Pro-Castro Essays
Participants assumed that the person reading the anti-castro essay had more negative feelings towards Castro than the person reading the pro-Castro essay
Blue-Green Stimuli in New Guinea Study
Participants were shown triads of colour chips and were asked to identity which two chips were more similar (Robertson et al. 2000) - The chips were equidistant in terms of hue, however, two of the chips crossed boundary between two different colour terms (nol-war boundary) • People's judgement for colours were compared when the two chips crossed a colour boundary in their own language, or in another culture's language • People make more judgments consistent with their language, based on whether the colour of the chips crossed the boundaries of the color terms in their own language than in the other languages - English speakers are better than chance in identifying with a "Green-Blue" Boundary - Berinmo did the best when the colours were in their colour terms and same with Himba (in their colour terms)
Study: Explored people's attribution in India and the US (Miller, 1984)
Participants, who ranged in age from 8 to adults, read a number of scenarios where a target person did something, and then offered explanations for the target person's behaviours - Their explanations were coded for being either dispositional or situational - American and Indian 8 year olds gave similar attributions - As Americans got older, they made more dispositional attributions, but not situational ones - Americans show the fundamental attribution error Consistent across other research: Westerners are more likely to make the FAE than people of other non-Western cultures - Older Indians made more situational attributions, but not dispositional ones - Indian adults show a reverse fundamental attribution error
What happens when the Piraha are asked to do simple tasks that require counting to numbers beyond 3? (Gordon, 2004)
Piraha were asked to do a series of matching tasks, such as to guess whether there are any nuts remaining in can after watching some be taken out, trying to copy some matching lines, or trying to match a series of knocks • In general, they had an approximate understanding of magnitude, such that they matched larger quantities with increasingly large quantities, however, they were only accurate up to small numbers, such as to 3 or 4 • The larger the number they were asked to represent, the larger was their error, however, they did show a general sense of approximate quantities • They often would use their fingers to aid their performance, however, this was highly inaccurate, even for numbers smaller than five
Naive Dialecticism
Related to holistic reasoning, may have come from China - Chinese show a relative acceptance for contradiction - Based on a view that everything is connected and is constantly in flux; symbolized by the yin and yang - the universe moves back and forth between opposite pole "Belief A" is connected to and is always changing into its opposite, "Belief Not A" - hence, there can be no real logical contradiction
Representing Space in Absolute Terms
Representing space in absolute terms is common among most subsistence societies in the world - This is common even among people who are bilingual and have learned egocentric direction terms in one of their languages - apparently, they prefer to represent in absolute ways - Chimpanzees also don't represent space in egocentric ways - Egocentric space representation appears to be a relatively recent development in human history
New Guinea Study and Color Perception
Showed them colour chips - The studies showed that the Dani could better learn new color terms that were closer to the prototypes of English color labels, than they could learn color terms that were further from the English prototypes (Learned the Red chip better than the Pink(Magenta)) • This research was enormously influential in arguing that language is independent of thought
Study: Facial Recognition (Schooler & Engstler- Schooler, 1990)
Studies find that when people verbally describe a face that this later impairs their recognition of the face, apparently because one's verbal descriptions do not capture the whole of the face - Only able to describe a small subset of the face, and therefore impairs your memory - they do better on this task when they don't have to verbally describe the face
Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)
Tendency to ignore situational information while focusing on dispositional information - it is very difficult for people to attend to situational constraints on behaviour, greater focus on the individual and the individual's disposition
Debate with Indigenous Tribes and Numbers
There is still such debate whether these indigenous tribes cannot represent numbers because they don't have the number terms (a Whorfian argument) or because they lack the cultural learning - Have never been exposed to ideas of numbers (therefore unable to think numbers) Subsequent studies reveal that very young children, as well as those from other tribes without numbers, represent number logarithmically - Mundurucu participants were shown on a laptop a line between the values of one and 1- dots - They were then shown a set of dots and were asked to indicate the position on a line Young children do the same **This suggests that people's innate number sense may be logarithmic, and they learn linear numbers greater than 3 through cultural learning
Westerners and the Value of the Spoken Word
They appear to value the spoken word more than East Asians - In Judeo-Christians belief the "word" is sacred - Ancient Greeks viewed knowledge to emerge through the spoken word - the first amendment to the US constitution is to protect one's freedom of speech Contrast with Asia: - Lao Tzu said that "he who knows does not speak. He who speak does not know" - Various Eastern religions also emphasize silent meditation rather than prayer - A Korean proverb states that "An empty cart makes more noise"
Cross-Cultural Research on Thought and Language
This is highly relevant to cross-cultural research as one way that cultures differ is in their languages and the words that are available to them • Whorfian hypothesis is taken seriously in the movement for people to speak in terms that are "politically correct" and one example is that if we use words such as "physically challenged" instead of "handicapped" to describe people confined to wheelchairs, we will be more likely to think of these people as being capable and competent, which should serve to empower them
Aristotle's System for Dealing with Contradiction
Three Principles: - Law of identity: A = A - Law of excluded middle: A = B or A = not B (only two possibilties) - Law of non-contradiction: A/ = not A
Collectivism Facilitates...
Useful Ideas • Being concerned about others leads to solutions that fit with the goals of the group • Working with others lead Asians to generate more appropriate ideas
Viewing Art and How we Interpret It
Western Painting - Low horizon, very perspective bend (elements get smaller, conveying distance) - Objects closer to you are drawn in more detail, more attention grabbing (more focus on the foreground) Japanese Painting - The artist's perspective is more of a bird's-eye-view - the size between elements of the scene is similar
Wolf Picture with different Backgrounds
Westerners: describe such scenes, they typically begin by describing the focal animal East Asians: in contrast, often describe the scene by starting off with the context than with the wolf
Heejung Kim and Thinking Aloud vs. Suppression Study - Performance on Raven's Matrices
When Euro-Americans are thinking aloud their performance is relatively unaffected - In contrast, Asian-Americans perform significantly worse when they are thinking aloud with when they are silent • Conversely, Euro-Americans perform worse when they are saying the alphabet - Asian-Americans are relatively unaffected by saying the alphabet This suggests that Asian-Americans' silent thoughts are non-verbal on this task, whereas Euro-Americans are thinking verbally about the task even when silent - Holistic thinking put into words doesn't work
High-Context Culture and Involvement with Individuals
people are deeply involved with each other, and this involvement leads them to have much shared information that guides their behaviour - They have a great deal of information in common that they can rely on, and thus they can be less explicit in what they say ie. East Asian cultures
Low Context Culture and Involvement with Individuals
relatively less involvement among individuals, and there is less shared information to guide behaviour - As a result, it is necessary for people to communicate in more explicit detail, as others are less able to fill in the gaps of what is not said Ie. North American cultures
Language and Color Perception
• Although colour exists along a continuum, colour terms are discrete (blue, green - categorical words) • Colour terms vary dramatically around the world, although there are only a limited number of patterns of colour terms in all languages
Picture with Boy in the Centre (Comparing East Asians and Americans)
• East Asians' judgments of the centre target's facial expression are more influenced by the expression of the surrounding others • The expressions of the background people had no impact on the judgments of the faces of the Americans • Judging emotional expressions is more of a social event for East Asians How is it that East Asians are influenced more by the background of scenes? • To address this the researchers had participants wear an eye monitor and tracked their gaze
Intentional vs. Unintentional
• English and Spanish speakers were equally accurate when identifying the targets who had acted intentionally (the languages do not differ in how they describe intentional agency) • However, English speakers are more accurate than the Spanish speakers in recalling who had broken the vase unintentionally
Impoverished Odor Lexicon
• English speakers have few words for odors, in contrast to the Jahai of Malaysia • English speakers are also notoriously bad at identifying odors • When given a series of colors and odors to identify, Americans reach much more agreement among each other for colors than odors. The Jahai do about as well for both colors and odors (given their smaller color lexicon)
Numerical Cognition in the Absence of Words
• Much of numeric cognition is a cultural invention - people have few innate math abilities - they mostly emerge with cultural learning • Young children are able to represent numbers up to 3, and after that, they require cultural learning to represent larger numbers • Some cultures do not have number terms beyond "two" The Piraha from the Amazon have terms that correspond to have 1,2, and many
Interpreting Emotional Experience
• Western's attention: looking at different aspects of the face • East Asian's attention: looking at not just the face but other's as well - In the first second: people from both cultures largely look at the target - After that, East Asians look more to the background than do Westerners, who continue to fixate on the focal target This cultural pattern also occurs for non-social scenes - East Asians appear to more habitually look for relations in their environments Saccades: extremely quick eye movements that shift people's gaze from one fixation point to another • Chinese participants made more of these compared to Americans
Linguistic Relativity and Perceptions of Agency
• When describing an accident in English, people commonly use an agentive description ("Justin tore the bodice" instead of "The bodice tore") - Therefore when English speakers wish to avoid blame for an event, they are more likely to describe it in nonagentive ways
