Chapter 3.3: Cultural Differences in Social Cognition

Which is the definition of analytic thinking?

A. A type of thinking in which people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context

Which of the following is true of the holistic thinking style?

A. People living in the West can think holistically if they are primed with pictures taken in Japan

How are our schemas influenced by our culture?

Although everyone uses schemas to understand the world, the content of our schemas is influenced by the culture in which we live.

Which of the following is most true about cultural differences in social thinking?

B. Although everyone uses schemas to understand the world, the content of those schemas is influenced by the culture in which they live

Researchers took photographs in randomly chosen locations in cities in Japan and the United States. They found that on average, city scenes in Japan contained more:

B. objects that competed for people's attention

Where do differences in holistic versus analytic thinking come from?

C. different philosophical traditions of the East versus the West

Where do these differences in holistic versus analytic thinking come from?

Richard Nisbett (2003) suggests that they are rooted in the different philosophical traditions of the East versus West. Eastern thought has been shaped by the ideas of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, which emphasize the connectedness and relativity of all things. Western thought is rooted in the Greek philosophical tradition of Aristotle and Plato, which focuses on the laws governing objects, independent of their context.

Do all cultures include holistic and analytic thinking?

This finding suggests that people in all cultures are capable of thinking holistically or analytically (they have the same tools in their mental toolbox), but that the environment in which people live, or even which environment has been recently primed, triggers a reliance on one of the styles

holistic thinking style

a type of thinking in which people focus on the overall context, particularly the ways in which objects relate to each other; this type of thinking is common in East Asian cultures

analytic thinking style

a type of thinking in which people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context; this type of thinking is common in Western cultures

How are Schemas a very important way by which cultures exert their influence?

namely, by instilling mental structures that influence the very way we understand and interpret the world.