Chapter 9 - Cognition and Perception

What are the characteristics of holistic thinking?

Focuses on context as a whole: • objects exist in relation to one another and to the surrounding context. • objects are understood in terms of how they relate to the rest of the context. • relationships between objects are used as a basis for categorizing them. • experience with objects and their relationships to other objects and the surrounding.context is used to explain the behavior of objects

Are there cross cultural differences in the relation between talking (asserting your opinion) and self-expression?

A study asked European American and East Asian American to complete a questionnaire and then were given four pens to choose from as compensation. In one condition they were asked to express their choice verbally, whereas in another condition they simply made the choice without verbal accompaniment. After taking the pen the experimenter, apparently realizing it was the last one of its kind she had, took it back and gave the participant an obviously inferior pen. Participants in both conditions then completed another survey that included some questions regarding their satisfaction with the pen they received. They found European Americans were significantly less satisfied with the pen they received if they had verbalized their choice previously than if they had not. In contrast, Asian Americans satisfaction with the pen they received was unaffected by whether they had previously verbalized their choice or not. For European Americans verbalizing beliefs produces a stronger commitment towards those beliefs, which in this case was preference for a particular pen - verbal self-expressions affect the view they hold of themselves more than do the verbal self-expressions of Asian Americans.

Do Easterners, who tend to be holistic thinkers, and Westerners, who tend to be analytic thinkers, differ in their approach to reasoning? Part 2.

A study had East Asian, Asian American, and European American participants were given a target object and two groups of objects and asked to decide in a classification condition (meant to encourage rule-based categorization), "which group does the target object belong to," and in a similarity condition (meant to encourage family resemblance-based strategy), "which group the target object is most similar to." In the classification condition, all three groups of participants showed an overwhelming preference to make their classifications using a rule-based strategy. But in the similarity condition, European Americans preferred a rule-based strategy (and to the same extent as in the classification condition), East Asians showed a stronger preference now for a family resemblance-based strategy. Asian Americans were in between. They found that under certain conditions, East Asians show a stronger preference for a more holistic strategy (one based in this case on family resemblance) when categorizing items than do Americans, who seem to prefer a more analytic strategy (one based in this case on the use of a unidimensional rule). Westerners, as analytic thinkers, tend to use formal reasoning (a rule-based strategy for categorization) to solve problems, and Easterners, as holistic thinkers, tend to use intuitive reasoning (a family resemblance-based strategy) for categorization.

How do Americans and Chinese differ in their explanations of blame?

A study had participants from the US and Hong Kong read a scenario in which a pharmacy worker made an error while mixing medications. They were then asked to endorse various statements as to why the error might have occurred. They found that whereas US participants more strongly endorsed dispositional causes (e.g., the pharmacy worker was careless), the Chinese participants more strongly endorsed situational causes (e.g., the clinic did not provide enough training for workers). The researchers coded newspaper articles written in English (New York Times) and Chinese (World Journal) newspapers about murders. They found that whereas journalists writing in English made more dispositional attributions (e.g., "had a very bad temper," or "mentally unstable") to explain the murderers' behaviour, Chinese made more situational attributions (e.g., "rivalry with a slain student," or "recently been fired"). Americans are much more likely to look to personal dispositions to explain blameworthy behavior, and Chinese are much more likely to look to situations for their explanations. Other studies suggest these cultural differences are particularly pronounced when the situational information is made particularly salient.

The Effect Of Thinking On Talking - East vs. West

A study looked at European Americans and East Asian Americans and asked if they would be differentially affected by thinking aloud while solving problems? Study 1: European American and East Asian American participants were asked to solve Raven's Progressive Matrices while either thinking aloud or thinking to themselves. They found that while European Americans performance was not affected by thinking allowed, East Asian Americans performance was impaired by thinking aloud. Study 2: They first worked through 10 such matrices thinking to themselves and then worked through 10 more matrices either thinking aloud or while engaging in articulatory suppression (involving reciting the alphabet). The number of matrices they solved correcting in the second half while thinking aloud or while engaging in articulatory suppression was compared to the number they solved in the first half while thinking to themselves. They found Whereas the European Americans performed similarly whether they thought aloud or to themselves, Asian Americans performed considerably worse when thinking aloud as compared to when thinking to themselves. Interestingly, however, European Americans performed considerable worse when reciting the The results suggest that for European Americans verbalizing what they are doing is important for thinking, as problem solving was impaired when they were prevented from verbalizing what they were doing. For Asian Americans verbalization is not important for thinking, as their ability to solve problems was not impaired when they were prevented from verbalizing what they were doing as compared to thinking to themselves. Asian Americans, on the other hand, were unaffected by reciting the alphabet, performing about the same as when they thought to themselves. There seems to profound cultural differences in the ways people think, verbally or nonverbally, in solving certain kinds of problems.

Do Easterners, who tend to be holistic thinkers, and Westerners, who tend to be analytic thinkers, differ regarding how much information they might consult to solve a problem?

A study looked at Korean, Asian American, and American participants who were given descriptions of someone acting in an antisocial or a prosocial manner. They were then given a list of items (varying along some relevance-irrelevance dimension) that might be pertinent to explaining the motive of the individual involved. From this list they were asked to obtain a smaller set of items that would be most relevant to discerning the motive of the protagonist. And in one condition, an inclusion condition, they were asked to choose items that would be relevant, whereas in another condition, an exclusion condition, they were asked to remove items that they thought would be irrelevant. They found that Korean participants considered more information than either Asian Americans or Americans but only did so in the exclusion condition, that is, when they were tasked with removing irrelevant items. They found that Korean participants considered more information than either Asian Americans or Americans but only did so in the exclusion condition, that is, when they were tasked with removing irrelevant items. They observed that Koreans considered more external items (e.g., regarding the relationship between the graduate student and professor and/or circumstance) in both inclusion an exclusion conditions than did Americans and Asian Americans. Evidently, thinking more about how people are enmeshed in their contexts, holistic thinking Koreans considered more items, even superficially irrelevant ones, in trying to arrive at their decisions about motive. Analytic thinking Asian Americans and Americans, on the other hand, thinking more about the immediate event and people themselves, considered only those items that seemed most relevant to the cases.

How might Easterners and Westerners deal with contradiction? Dialectical and Non-Dialectical Proverbs.

A study looked at culture and reasoning about contradiction between Americans and Chinese. Given the importance placed on change, contradiction, and interconnectedness in Chinese thought, the prediction is that Chinese participants should be more tolerant of ambiguity, and where possible, should attempt to reconcile differences using a compromise approach - where the end result is a "middle way" that integrates both perspectives into a unified whole. On the other hand, given the importance placed on identity, non-contradiction, and separateness in Western thought, the prediction is that American participants should be less tolerant of ambiguity and, where possible, should attempt to reconcile differences using an either/or approach - where the end result in that one perspective is right and other is wrong. Study 1 and 2: Preference for Dialectical and Non-Dialectical Proverbs. Study 1: Participants were given dialectical ("beware of your friends not your enemies" and "too humble is half proud") and non-dialectical ("one against all is certain to fall" and "for example is no proof") proverbs and asked to make preference judgments. They found that Americans greatly preferred non-dialectical to dialectical American proverbs, the Chinese preferred dialectical to non-dialectical Chinese proverbs. Study 2: Participants were given unfamiliar dialectical and non-dialectical Yiddish proverbs and asked their preference. Though no difference in preference between the Americans and Chinese was found for the non-dialectical proverbs, Chinese showed a stronger preference for the dialectical proverbs than did Americans.

Fish and Underwater Scene

A study looked at how might presenting items with the same background and a different background affect memory for those items? One could expect that Japanese participants, who rely on holistic processing, would be more affected by the contextual changes than American participants, who rely on analytic processing. American and Japanese participants were shown animated computer images of an underwater scene: swimming fish, waving seaweed, and floating bubbles. 1) Participants were asked to describe what they saw. 2) Participants were subsequently shown fish from the scenes either in the same context, a different context, or no context and asked to recognize them. Results: In describing the scenes, the Japanese made more references to background objects than Americans. For remembering the fish, Americans were unaffected by a change in background, but the Japanese were more likely to recognize the fish when presented with the same background than when presented with no background or a different background. They also replicated this study using animals more familiar to Americans and found the same pattern of results: though both Japanese and Americans performed better with the same background than with a different background, the Japanese participants' recognition performance was impaired more by a change in background. Japanese (encode more background information) and Americans (encode less background information) seem to be perceiving the two scenes differently and this apparently has repercussions for subsequent recognition of focal items from those scenes.

Are people who use different color labels affected in the same way by boundaries that exist between color categories?

A study showed participants three color chips and then asked which of two chips, chip 1 or chip 2, was most similar to a target chip. They found that color choices reflected color boundaries of the respective language. Specifically, English speakers relied on categorical perception when the two chips crossed the blue-green boundary, Berinmo speakers relied on categorical perception when the two chips crossed the nol-wor boundary, and Himba speakers relied on categorical perception when the two chips crossed the dumba-borou boundary. Whereas Russian speakers have different linguistic terms for light blue ("goluboy") and dark blue ("siniy"), English speakers simply have a generic term for the color, namely blue, and then modify this with an extra word, namely light or dark, to distinguish between different shades. Might these differences in language lead to differences in how people discriminate colours? Russian-speaking and English-speaking participants were presented with a triad of blues, a target patch (dark or light blue) and a test patch (either a dark blue and a light blue OR two light blues OR two dark blues), and were asked to match one of the test patches to the target as fast as possible. We might expect Russian-speakers, who have distinct linguistic terms for light blue and dark blue, to perform this task faster when the two test colors fall on different sides of the their linguistic boundary (one is light blue and one is dark blue) than when the two colors fall in the same color category (they are both light blues OR both dark blues). And as English speakers have no such linguistic boundary we might expect them to perform the same in both instances. Russian-speaking participants were indeed faster at the color discrimination task when the two test colors fell in different color categories (light blue and dark blue) than when they fell in the same color categories (both light blues OR both dark blues). English-speakers enjoyed no advantage. They found that this advantage disappeared when participants simultaneously had to hold digits in mind but not when they had to hold a visual pattern in mind. As holding digits in mind relies on language (i.e., repeating the digits), this suggests the advantage enjoyed by Russian speakers was due to their use of language (i.e., using different color terms for light blue and dark blue). Language can in fact affect color perception: people from different cultures who have different color categories perceive colors differently.

Do Easterners, who tend to be holistic thinkers, and Westerners, who tend to be analytic thinkers, differ in their approach to reasoning?

A study took East Asian, Asian American, and European American participants and gave them several alien animals asking them to categorize them as being from Venus or from Saturn. After each categorization, they received feedback as to whether they were correct or not. In addition, participants in a rule-based condition were given a rule to follow - that an animal was from a given planet if it possessed certain features, whereas participants in an exemplar condition were not given any rule to follow and had to rely on their overall impression of what planet the animal might be from. After learning these categories, participants were given more animals and for each had to determine a quickly as possible whether each was from Venus or Saturn. - In the test phase of the rule condition, half of the animals were positive matches: they belonged to one category by the rule, and also were very similar to a training exemplar from that same category. - The other half of the new animals were negative matches: they belonged to one category as defined by the rule, but were very similar to a training exemplar from the opposite category. They found that East Asian participants took significantly longer and made more errors in making negative matches (where the animal closely matched one they had seen but that nevertheless did not follow the rule they were given) than did either Asian Americans or European Americans in the rule based condition. There were no differences, however, in the exemplar condition. This shows East Asians have a more difficult time applying a rule for categorization purposes, at least for when there is a conflict between a rule-based and an exemplar based categorization strategy.

Where was holistic thinking evident in history?

Among the ancient Chinese, in the early traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism which emphasized harmony, interconnectedness, and change. The world consisting of continuously interacting substances. Evident in their medical traditions and the cultures emphasis on nature.

Rule Based Reasoning

Analytic thinkers tend to view the world as operating according to a set of universal abstract laws and rules, and they will apply such rules and laws when they try to make sense of a situation.

Field Independence

Analytic thinkers, they can separate objects from their backgrounds.

Art and Cognition

Art varies systematically across cultures, and this might reflect fundamentally different ways of perceiving the world. The emphasis placed on figures in Western art (with faces being about three times larger in Western art) and the background in Eastern art (with horizons of landscapes being 15% higher on average in Eastern art) reflects the focus of Westerners on analytic thinking (focusing on objects) and the focus of Easterners on holistic thinking (focusing on contexts).

Analytic Thinking

Characterized by a focus on objects and their attributes. Objects are perceived as existing independently from their contexts as they are understood in terms of their component parts. The attributes that make up objects are used as a basis for categorizing them, and a set of fixed abstract rules is used to predict and explain the behaviour of these objects. It is more common in Western cultures than elsewhere.

Holistic Thinking

Characterized by an orientation to the context as a whole. It represents an associative way of thinking, which gives attention to the relations among objects and among the objects and the surrounding context, and their behaviour is predicted and explained on the basis of those relationships. Also emphasizes knowledge gained through experience rather than the application of fixed abstract rules. Far more common in East Asian cultures.

Operationalizing and Studying Creativity - East Vs. West

Creativity may be defined as the generation of ideas that are both novel and appropriate. Westerners, perhaps because of their focus on individualism, tend to produce more novel ideas and breakthrough ideas. Westerners prefer novel objects more than East Asians do. Westerners produce more ideas when primed with individualistic thoughts than collectivistic ones. Creativity is associated with mental illness amongst Western creative geniuses but not amongst Eastern creative geniuses. Multiculturalism may in fact promote creativity: in some experimental work, exposure to both individualistic and collectivistic ideas has resulted in greater overall creativity.

Sapir-Wharf Strong vs. Weak?

Cultures with few number words also seem to map numbers onto space differently. The Mundurucu, an Amazonia indigenous group with few number words, map numbers onto space logarithmically (see more space between smaller than larger numbers) rather than linearly (see the same space between all numbers). This also seems to describe children's understanding of numbers as kindergarten-age American children see 10 as existing halfway between the numbers 1-100. These kinds of results suggest our default understanding of numbers may be logarithmic and that we only come to have a linear understanding of numbers by training and exposure to linear numeric terms.

Eye Tracking of Visual Scenes

Do people from different cultures really see things differently? (aka: looking at and attending to different aspects of a visual scene) or are they processing the same information differently (aka: looking at and attending to the same object but thinking about it differently, which then produces different patterns of brain activity)? This question can be answered by using eye trackers to examine where people are looking as they inspect a visual scene. A study took Japanese and Americans and showed them cartoonish pictures of a central person surrounded by several other people. In the some of the pictures the central person's facial expression matched the facial expressions of the surrounding people, and in other pictures the central person's facial expression was different from the facial expressions of the surrounding people. The participants' task was to rate how angry, sad, and happy the central figure appeared to be. They were subsequently given more pictures, some identical to ones they'd seen before and others with details changed, and they were asked to for each if it was identical to one they had seen before. They found that Americans ratings of the central figure's emotions were relatively unaffected by the facial expressions of the surrounding figures, the Japanese rated the emotion of the central figure higher when the facial expressions on the surrounding figures were congruent rather than incongruent with that of the central figure. The researchers then replicated this study but also used eye-trackers to see where the Japanese and Americans focused while looking at the pictures. For recognition judgment, the Japanese were better at detecting changes to the picture BUT only when those changes occurred in the background figures' facial expressions. Results: Japanese spent less time focused less on the central figure and more time focused on the background figures than did the Americans. Japanese and Americans spent a similar amount of time focused on the central figure during the first seconds, the Japanese allocated their attention to the background figures much more than the Americans did during the following seconds.

Will the different ways that English and Spanish speakers describe agency differentially affect their memories for the perpetrators of the acts?

During an encoding phase, English and Spanish speakers were shown short videos of events from balloon popping study and told their memories may be tested (though not told exactly how). During a test phase, they were shown new videos of the events perpetrated in the videos shown at encoding and then were presented with two actors (one which actually was in the original video and one who wasn't) and asked which one performed the act in the video shown at encoding. Though intentional agents were remembered equally as well by English and Spanish speakers, accidental agents were better remembered by the English speakers. The greater tendency by English speakers to describe accidental events in an agentive manner results in deeper encoding of that individual and thus more accurate memories for him/her.

What are the cultural innovations regarding innovation?

East Asian collectivistic cultures have an emphasis on useful ideas, so they are more likely to foster incremental innovations. Western more individualistic cultures place emphasis on novel ideas, so they encourage more breakthrough innovations. Incremental innovations highlight the importance of useful ideas, because they typically involve modifying an idea to better fit with practical constraints around it, but companies that produce many innovations rarely produce breakthroughs.

High-Context vs. Low-Context Cultures

East Asian cultures are high-context cultures, meaning much of their communication is implicit, whereas North American cultures are low context cultures, meaning much of their communication is explicit. Low-Context Cultures: - Low involvement with each other and little shared information that guides behaviour. - Unclear about appropriate ways of behaving in each situation. - Considerable explicit communication needed to guide behaviour. - North American. High-Context Cultures: - Deep involvement with each other and a great deal of shared information that guides behaviour. - Clear and appropriate ways of behaving in each situation. - Little explicit communication. - East Asian.

High and Low Context Communication Differences - East vs. West

East Asian cultures are high-context cultures, meaning much of their communication is implicit, whereas North American cultures are low context cultures, meaning much of their communication is explicit. Perhaps these results simply reflect characteristics of the Japanese and English languages that leads people to focus more on vocal tone in the Japanese language and more on meaning in the English language. If this is the case, then bilingual speakers of a high-context language might be expected to exhibit different patterns of interference depending on the language they are speaking. A second experiment, designed to test this, the researchers had Filipinos, who are from a high context culture and who are both fluent in Tagalog and English, perform the same task in the previous experiment. They found regardless of the language they were doing the task in that they exhibited the Japanese pattern, taking longer to respond to meaning (while ignoring vocal tone) than they did to vocal tone (while ignoring meaning). This suggests the findings reflect differences between high-context and low-context cultures rather than vagaries of the different languages.

Aesthetic Preference - East Asians vs. Americans

East Asians are accustomed to seeing objects contextually, therefore they should be predisposed to produce and prefer art (paintings, drawings, pictures) that incorporates a large amount of context. Americans are accustomed to abstracting out objects from their context, they should be predisposed to prefer art (paintings, drawings, pictures) in which context is subordinated to objects. A study examined 731 Western paintings from the MET and 660 East Asian paintings from four major museums in East Asia. They coded each landscape painting for height of horizon, and each portrait painting for size of model in the painting. They found that in East Asian paintings the horizon was placed significantly higher in landscape paintings and the models were significantly smaller in portrait paintings over the Western paintings. American and East Asian participants were asked to draw landscapes and take portrait pictures of a model with a camera. Regarding landscape drawings, they found that East Asian participants drew landscapes with the horizon significantly (19%) higher than Americans. In addition, they included much (74%) more contextual information than Americans. For portraits, East Asians included significantly more background in their pictures of the model than Americans, thus resulting in the model only being 35% as large as that of Americans. American and Japanese participants were asked to provide preference judgments for portrait photographs. Japanese showed a preference for portrait photographs with more background and small models, Americans showed a preference for portrait photographs with less background and larger models. The overall finding was Western art tends to focus on figures whereas Eastern art tends to focus on contexts.

How do East Asians and North Americans view the past and future?

East Asians place more value on things that have happened in the past compared with the future, but the opposite pattern has been found in North Americans.

Eastern vs. Western - Contradictory and Consistent Views

East Asians tend to describe themselves in a more contradictory manner than do Westerners. And, unlike for Westerners, viewing themselves in a more contradictory manner is not associated with adverse mental health outcomes. A study asked participants to asked to describe themselves in open-ended questionnaires, Chinese provided more contradictory statements than Americans (Ex: statements that indicated both high and low self-esteem). Another study found that Japanese were more likely than Canadians to hold contradictory views of their personalities.. Other research has found that East Asians hold less consistent self-concepts, and that such contradictory views of self are more tolerated by East Asians, with those holding such views suffering no adverse mental health outcomes. And other research has found East Asians that experience contradictory emotions are actually physically healthier than those who experience more consistent emotions.

Eastern Views and Cognition

Eastern views may be represented by three principles: 1) Principle of Change: This principle holds that reality is a process, that it does not stand still, and is always in flux. 2) Principle of Contradiction: This principle holds that reality is filled with contradictions. 3) Principle of Relationship or Holism This principle holds that nothing is isolated and independent; rather, everything is interconnected. This is best exemplified in the symbol of yin and yang: entities are opposed to one another and yet connected in time and space as a whole.

How might Easterners and Westerners deal with contradiction?

Easterners are more tolerant of ambiguity and resolve conflicts using a compromise approach, whereas Westerners are less tolerant of ambiguity and resolve conflicts using a differentiation approach.

Different languages parse the color spectrum in very different ways. Does carving up the color spectrum in different ways affect the perception of color?

Eleanor Rosch Heider found that the Dugum Dani, a stone-age agricultural group living in Arian Jaya, could remember colors in ways similar to Americans despite only having two color categories corresponding to black (dark hued colors) and white (light hued colors). In addition, they could learn and recall new words that were associated with colors that corresponded with the foci of the eight basic chromatic categories of English more easily than they could learn words for colors that occupied intermediate points along the color spectrum. These results suggested color perception and memory were largely independent from the color words in a language. These investigators studied three linguistic groups. - The Berinmo from Papua, New Guinea. Their language consists of five basic color terms: black (kel), white (wap), red (mehi), yellow (wor), and green (nol). - The Himba from Namibia. Their language also consists of five basic color terms: black (zoozu), white (vapa), red (serandu), yellow (dumbu), and green (burou). - English speaking Britons. Their language has eleven basic color terms: black, white, red, orange, brown, yellow, green, blue, purple, and pink. Though there is much overlap between the color boundaries and exemplars for the three cultures, there are clear differences.

Do English and Spanish speakers differ in their descriptions of agency?

English and Spanish speakers were shown short videos where the actor either did something intentionally (pops a balloon) or unintentionally (while reaching to put a tack in a container accidently brushes and pops a balloon) and were asked to describe what happened. An intentional description would be: "He popped the balloon," whereas an unintentional one would be, "The balloon popped," and their Spanish equivalents. Whereas intentional events were described equally agentively by both English and Spanish speakers, accidental events were more often described agentively by English speakers than by Spanish speakers. When an actor accidentally causes something to happen, English speakers are much more likely to assign agency to an actor than are Spanish speakers.

How might people who speak different languages spatially arrange events in time?

English speakers tend to think of events as unfolding over time from left to right. This likely reflects the fact that English is written left to right. Australian aborigines think of events unfolding over time from East to West. This reflects their absolute coordinate system and the fact that the sun rises in the east and tracks west where it sets. Whereas English speakers arranged them left to right no matter what direction they were facing, Aboriginal speakers always arranged them east to west: if they were facing north, they arranged them from right to left, but if they were facing south they arranged them left to right This demonstrates how space and time perception are grounded in linguistic markers of language.

Taxonomic Categorization

Especially common among Westerners and groups items according to the perceived similarity of attributes. Common attributes categorization strategy.

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis - Support for a Strong Version?

Evidence for a strong version of this hypothesis would require not just that people's perceptions and thinking are influenced by language, but that the language they speak determines their perceptions and thinking. Ex: finding that people are unable to entertain certain concepts because they lack the language to do so would provide that kind of support. The Piraha is a tribe from the Lowland Amazon region of Brazil that has a number system that contains only the numbers 1, 2, and "many." Even though they do not explicitly name other numbers are they nevertheless able to conceptualize these numbers? To test this investigators performed a couple of experiments. Exp #1: The investigators showed participants a can with several nuts in it. After investigating it, the investigator took the can away and began removing nuts one nut at a time. Participants were asked every time a nut was removed whether they thought any nuts were remaining in the can. They found the Piraha started making errors after two nuts had been removed. And the more nuts the can contained the worse the Piraha were at determining when the can was empty. Exp #2: The investigators showed participants several items (batteries) and asked them to place the same number of nuts as there were items. The Piraha were accurate until the number of items to be matched went beyond two. And their accuracy steady declined the more items there were to be matched. The Piraha do not seem to have concepts for quantities beyond 2, thus providing support for a strong version of eh Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Saccades

Extremely quick eye movements that shift people's gaze from one fixation point to another.

What are the characteristics of analytic thinking?

Focuses on objects and their attributes: • objects exist independently from their contexts. • objects are understood in terms of their component parts. • attributes of objects are used as a basis for categorizing them. • fixed abstract rules are used to explain the behavior of objects.

Fundamental Attribution Error

Fundamental because its believed to be deeply engrained within a person. When a person is acting in a particular way, people assume that they are doing so because of their underlying dispositions, so they ignore the context/situational constraints which may be driving their behaviour.

How to Americans view themselves?

Having a contradictory self view in the USA is associated with feelings of anxiety and depression. They hold less contradictory views in America and view change as occurring in linear ways.

Associative Reasoning

Holistic thinkers should be more likely to make sense of a situation by considering the relationships among objects or events, and they look for evidence of events clustering together, such as similarity among events or of temporal contiguity of events.

Field Dependence

Holistic thinkers, they tend to view objects as bound to their backgrounds.

When are East Asians most likely to use holistic reasoning?

In a situation where there is a conflict between an analytic and holistic solution. When no conflict, they can rely on analytic reasoning strategies.

Linguistic Relativity and Odor Perception

In one review of 30 years of research, Yeshurun and Sobel (2010) concluded that even though humans are capable of detecting and distinguishing between countless odorants, they are very poor at identifying them by name. Several studies, for example, have found when presented with common everyday odorants (e.g., coffee, peanut butter, chocolate), people only correctly name about 50% of them. If people exhibit similar performance with visual objects, they'd likely be deemed aphasic and sent for medical treatment. Yeshurun and Sobel argue from these findings, therefore, that hedonistic determination (e.g., pleasant or nasty smelling) is the primary function of olfaction rather than identification per se.

When are Westerners able to engage in holistic reasoning?

In situations when there is no conflict.

Where was analytic thinking evident in history?

In the Platonic perspective, that the world is a collection of discrete, unchanging objects that can be categorized by reference to a set of universal properties. Seen in Aristotle's view with "properties", and in Greek development of an elaborate formal logic system that searched for truth according to abstract rules and syllogisms existing independently of observations.

I-Ching

Includes a principle of contradiction, because everything is perceived to be fundamentally connected with everything else and constantly in flux, and no real contradiction exists. With this orientation toward the world, contradiction is not something to be rejected, but accepted.

At what age do these cross-cultural differences in understanding the causes of other peoples' behavior emerge?

Indian and American children of various ages were asked to describe a situation in which a person had behaved in either a prosocial or a deviant manner and then to explain why they had behaved in the manner they did. They found that Indian and American participants did not differ in their overall tendency to make dispositional and situational attributions, but as they aged Americans tended to make more dispositional attributions (known as the fundamental attribution error) and Indians tended to make more situational attributions (so a reverse fundamental attribution error). So the fundamental attribution error is not so fundamental after all.

What does the generation of novel ideas appear to be facilitated by?

Individualism. Westerners appear to generate more ideas than East Asians. It's possible that a greater motivation for uniqueness underlies this tendency. Westerners prefer more novel objects more so than East Asians do, they generate a larger number of ideas when they are primed with individualist thoughts than collectivistic ones. Asian Americans show more divergent thinking when primed with American culture compared with Asian culture, at least when they have an integrated bicultural identity. The novelty part of creativity appears to be facilitated by individualists and Western cultural experiences.

Covariation Detection

It stands to reason that because holistic thinkers are directing their attention to relationships among objects that they should be better at detecting covariation between objects - the extent to which objects are likely to occur together. Since East Asians tend to think holistically and Westerners tend to think analytically, East Asians should be better at covariation detection than Westerners. A study looked at Caucasian American and Taiwanese Chinese students and showed them pairs of pictures on a computer. When one picture was shown (ex: a lightbulb) the other picture (ex: a coin) was shown either 0% of the time, 40% of the time, 60% of the time, or 100% of the time. Later, participants were shown just one of the pictures (the lightbulb) and asked about the likelihood that the other picture (the coin) would appear beside it and how confident they were in their estimate. They found as the amount of actual covariation increased that Chinese estimates became stronger over the American estimates, and that the Chinese were much more confident in their estimates than were the Americans. The overall finding: East Asians, who rely on holistic thinking, are better at covariation detection, than Americans, who rely on analytic thinking.

Do those from high-context cultures focus on tone of utterances and do those from low context cultures focus on meaning of utterances?

Japanese and American participants were presented aurally with words that were either pleasant (grateful, refreshment) or unpleasant (bitter, complaint), and were presented either with a pleasant-sounding tone or an unpleasant-sounding tone. For some words the meaning of the word matched the tone (e.g., grateful spoken pleasantly) whereas for others the meaning of the word did not match the tone (grateful spoken unpleasantly). Participants were instructed to either ignore the tone of the word and answer if the meaning of the word was pleasant or unpleasant, or to ignore the meaning of the word and answer if the tone of the word was pleasant or unpleasant. The key dependent measure was how long it would take participants to respond when there was a mismatch between meaning and tone They found Japanese took longer to respond to meaning (while ignoring vocal tone) than they did to vocal tone (while ignoring meaning). On the other hand, they found the Americans took longer to respond to the vocal tone (while ignoring the meaning) than they did to the meaning (while ignoring vocal tone) of the words.

Linguistic Relativity and Perceptions of Agency

Language may also influence our perceptions of agency. There is a considerable literature on eyewitness testimony that has shown how framing can influence interpretation and memory for events. Loftus and Palmer (1974) showed participants a video and asked them either: 1) how fast was the car going when it "hit" the other car? Or 2) how fast was the car going when it "smashed" into the other car? Those asked the latter gave faster estimates than those asked the latter. One week later both groups were asked if they remember any broken glass at the scene. Those in the latter group were much more likely to erroneously remember seeing broken glass. Studies like this suggest that language can powerfully influence perceptions and memory. We might also expect languages that frame descriptions differently might also influence the perceptions and memories of those speaking the languages.

Language and Spatial Perception - How might people who speak different languages recall scenes they encounter?

Languages differ in terms of how they tend to describe objects in space. Dutch speakers tend to identify locations in relative terms. Ex: You might guide someone looking for bananas by telling them they are in front of the apples and to the left of the grapes. This is a relative description because it can vary depending on the direction the individual is coming from. Guugu Yimithirr, an aboriginal group in Australia, tend to identify locations in absolute terms. They might guide someone to the bananas by telling them they are north of the apples and west of the grapes. This is an absolute description because it does not vary depending on the direction the individual is coming from In a study, Dutch and Guugu Yimithirr speakers entered a room where they saw a table along the north wall with three figures on it (cow, pig, human). They then went into another room and were asked to recreate what they had seen on a table that this time was along the south wall. Whereas most of the Dutch maintained the relative positions of the three animals (cow, pig, human) so that the cow was to the left of the pig and the human was to the right of the pig, most of the Guugu Yimithirr switched the positions of the cow and human (human, pig, cow) so that the human was to the east of the pig and the cow to the west of the pig. This finding seems to be especially true of subsistence populations and is similar to how chimpanzees understand directions. The tendency to orient relative to one's own egocentric position may be a relatively recent development, and one that is peculiar to some industrialized cultures.

What do good creative ideas involve?

Novel solutions that are appropriate for the problems at hand.

High Context Culture

People in this culture are deeply involved with each other, which leads them to have much shared information that guides behaviour. There are clear and appropriate ways for behaving in each situation and this information is widely shared an understood so it doesn't need to be explicitly communicated. Much of the information that is communicated can be simply inferred because people have a great deal of information in common which they can rely on, so they can be less explicit in whatever they say. East Asians are high-context cultures. Their language is less explicit.

Categorical Perception

Perceiving stimuli belonging to separate and discrete categories, even though the stimuli may gradually differ from each other along a continuum.

The Law of Non-Contradition

Proposed by Aristotle, in which no statement could be both true and false. The law is at the heart of logical reasoning.

Naive Dialecticism

Reflects the profoundly different way of making sense of the world. The acceptance of contradiction. A perspective in which events and objects in the world are perceived as interconnected and fluid. Such a view leads to the acceptance of contradictions between two-opposing beliefs.

How does "busyness" of the environment affect cultural products and the ability to process information in busy scenes?

Researchers examined North American and East Asian conferences posters and websites and coded each for complexity. In addition, they had participants from North America and East Asia search for a target in complex webpages and assessed their time to find the target. They found that the East Asian posters were more complex than were the North American posters that contained multiple studies. And found that East Asian websites were more complex than North American websites. East Asians were quicker at finding at target on a webpage that contained a large amount of information (but not a small amount of information) than were North Americans. Growing up in a busy cultural environment seems to foster the creation of more complex products and also seems to facilitate the ability to process details in busy scenes.

Consequences of High and Low-Context Communication

Since Japanese are less explicit in their verbal communication than Americans, it's not surprising that they struggle when it comes to leaving messages on answering machines. Ex: Though Japanese and American participants performed equally well on a demanding cognitive tasks, Japanese participants perform significantly worse on the cognitive task than Americans when they were asked to do the task at the same time as they were to leave message on an answering machine. This suggests it's much more cognitively demanding for Japanese to leave a message than it is for Americans In fact, it may be this greater difficulty that explains why Japanese are half as likely to leave voice messages than are Americans.

Thematic Categorization

Stimuli are grouped together on the basis of causal, temporal or spatial relationships among them. Especially common in East Asians. Categorizing based on a relationship.

How might Easterners and Westerners deal with contradiction? Dialectical and Non-Dialectical Resolutions.

Study 3: Preference for Dialectical and Non-Dialectical Resolutions - Methods. Participants were given two everyday-life scenarios that involved some contradiction and were asked to provide in a sentence or two a resolution. Ex: Mother-Daughter Conflict & School-Fun Conflict. Resolutions were coded as dialectical ("both the mothers and daughters have failed to understand each other" or non-dialectical ("mothers have to recognize daughters' rights to their own values"). Mother-daughter conflict, more American responses were coded as non-dialectical (74%) than as dialectical (26%), and more Chinese responses were coded as dialectical (72%) than as non -dialectical (28%). School-fun conflict, more American responses were coded as non-dialectical (88%) than dialectical (12%), though an almost equal number of Chinese responses were coded as dialectical and non-dialectical.

How might Easterners and Westerners deal with contradiction? Logical Arguments.

Study 4: Logical Arguments - Methods. Participants were presented with 2 forms of an argument (ex: for the existence of God) that reached the same conclusion: 1) applied the principle of non-contradiction and 2) the principle of holism. Participants were asked to provide preference (persuasiveness and liking) judgments for each. American participants preferred the arguments that applied the law of non-contradiction and Chinese participants preferred the arguments that applied the principle of holism.

How might Easterners and Westerners deal with contradiction? Judgments About Contradictory Information.

Study 5: Judgments about Contradictory Information - Methods. Participants were presented with contradictory research findings and were asked to rate the plausibility of each. Ex: A social psychologist studied young adults and asserted that those who feel close to their families have more satisfying social relationships. Ex: A developmental psychologist studied adolescent children and asserted that those children who were less dependent on their parents and had weaker family ties were generally more mature. Whereas both American and Chinese participants rated one argument as more plausible than the other when they were rated in isolation (By separate groups), when both arguments were considered together, Americans seemed to rely on a differentiation strategy, increasing their ratings of the more plausible argument, whereas Chinese seemed to rely on a compromise strategy, decreasing their ratings for the more plausible argument and increasing their ratings for the less plausible argument

Sapir Wharf Hypothesis

Suggests language influences how we think about and view the world. There is plenty of evidence across various modalities suggesting this is in fact the case. The idea is that language influences how we think about and view the world. The strong version suggests linguistic determinism such that the language we speak determines how we think and view the world. The weak version suggests linguistic relativism such that the language we speak merely influences to some extent how we think and view the world. Though the strong version has been cast into doubt by psycholinguists and anthropologists, there is still considerable debate about the weak version.

Holistic Attention

Tend to perceive the world as consisting of an interrelated whole, would direct their attention more broadly across an entire scene.

How do East Asians see change?

That it is fluid and unpredictable.

Might the Jahai with their richer vocabulary be as capable of identifying smells as they are at identifying colors?

The Jahai are a group of nomadic hunter-gatherers in the mountain rainforests along the border between Peninsular Malaysia and Thailand. They have a lexicon of over a dozen verbs of olfaction that are used to describe a wide array of odours. Plants and animals are frequently handled in relation to their olfactory properties because of the importance that these smells play in the Jahai world. Some foraged items, such as many rodent and civet species, smell "bloody" to the Jahai and are considered perilous because "bloody" odors attract tigers. It's clearly adaptive for the Jahai to be particularly vigilant to this smell. So it's not surprising a term has been developed to specifically identify it. A study looked at Jahai-speaking and English-speaking men were asked to freely name several colours and odorants (cinnamon, turpentine, lemon, smoke, chocolate, rose, paint thinner, banana, pineapple, gasoline, soap, and onion). They coded the responses using Simpson's Diversity Index. If each participant used a different word to describe the color or odorant, the index would be 0. On the other hand, if each participant used the same word to describe the color or odorant, the index would be 1. They found that whereas English-speakers showed considerable agreement in naming colours and little agreement in naming odors, Jahai-speakers did as well in naming odors as they did in naming colors. English-speakers showed more agreement in naming colours than Jahai-speakers, Jahai-speakers showed more agreement in naming odors than Englishspeakers. English-speakers used predominantly source-based descriptions for odours (like a rose) and abstract descriptions for colors (e.g., yellow), Jahai-speakers used predominantly abstract descriptions for both odors (e.g., fruity) and colors (e.g., red). We are as capable of identifying odors as we are colors as long as we have developed the linguistic wherewithal to do so. And, whether we developed the linguistic tools to do so probably depends on the relative importance that olfaction versus other modalities, like vision or hearing, plays in our world.

Origins of Holistic Thinking - Confucian China

The ancient Chinese, with their traditions of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, focused on harmony, interconnectedness, and change. This tendency to see objects as part of an interacting system may explain why despite lacking the principles of science they acquired the concepts of magnetism, acoustic resonance, and the moon's role in the tides long before Westerners did.

Origins of Analytic Thinking - Ancient Greeks

The ancient Greeks, in accordance with Plato's forms, tended to see stability in the word. This led the ancient Greeks to seek out and establish abstract logical rules that existed independently of observations. This accordingly gave them a sense of control over objects and the world around them. The ancient Greeks tended to also focus on objects, explain their behaviors according to their properties and the categories to which they belonged. Aristotle explained a stone's falling in water by suggesting the stone had the property of "gravity" and explained a piece of wood floating by suggesting the wood had the property of "levity".

What is creativity?

The generation of ideas that are both novel, useful and appropriate.

What is collectivism associated with regards to creativity?

The generation of useful over novel ideas. They are socialized to be concerned about the opinions of others and to find solutions that will fit with the goals of the members of their groups.

Linguistic Relativity and Odor Perception - Odor & Language

The problem with studies on odor identification is that they have been done primarily with English-speakers. Perhaps odors are not as important to English speakers as they are in some other cultures such as hunter-gatherer cultures who might rely much more on smell and may have developed a richer vocabulary for identifying various smells.

Rod and Frame Task

The rod and the surrounding frame are rotated independently. The frame provides misleading information about the angle of the rod, so it is necessary to ignore the frame to correctly identify the angle of the rod. People who are high on field independence can do well on this task. It stands to reason that because holistic thinkers are directing their attention to relationships among objects that they should be worse at a task that requires them to separate a scene into its component parts. The rod-and-frame task in which a frame is rotated independently around a rod and the task is to determine when the rod is perfectly vertical. To do this well it is necessary to ignore the frame and just focus on the rod. As analytic thinkers are field independent, separating objects from their backgrounds, they should excel at such a task. But holistic thinkers are field dependent, viewing objects as bound to their backgrounds, they should have more difficulties with the task. A study looked at European-American and East-Asian students and tested them on the tasks in two modes: non-control mode, in which they told an experimenter when to stop when they perceived the rod to be vertical, and control mode where they adjusted the rod make it as vertical as they could. They found that, in both modes, European-Americans erred less than East Asians, and that European-Americans expressed more confidence in their judgments than East Asians in control mode. Interestingly, men erred less than women. The conclusion: East Asians, who rely on holistic thinking, are worse at the rod-and-frame task than are European-Americans, who rely on analytic thinking.

What are other cultural differences in attributional style?

There are religious differences in attributional style, with protestants being more likely to make dispositional attributions and Catholics situational attributions. There are socioeconomic differences, with working-class Americans being more likely to make situational attributions and middle-class Americans being more likely to make dispositional attributions. And these social class differences have been found across numerous cultures, including France, Russia, and India.

Wharfian (Linguistic Relativity) Hypothesis

There are two versions of this hypothesis. The strong version is that language determines how we think - we are unable to do much thinking on a topic if we don't have the relevant words available to us. This version has been universally rejected because much thought occurs outside of language. An example is prelinguistic infants and toddlers who show evidence for complex thought in the absence of language. The weaker version of this hypothesis is that the language we speak affects how we think. This version has a lot of debate and controversy surrounding it.

Western and Eastern Differences in Relation Between Talking and Thinking

There is a closer connection between talking and thinking among Westerners over Easterners: Westerners are more dependent on verbalizing to solve problems and are more dependent on verbalizing for establishing their self-identities. The Western intellectual tradition has emphasized the importance of talking for thinking. Ex: Homer held debating to be one of the most important skills a man can possess. And Socrates viewed knowledge as innate and that it could be uncovered through verbal reasoning, as reflected in his dialectic method. Even the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions emphasize speech, with the "Word" being considered sacred because of its divine power to create. In contrast, East Asian cultural traditions have not assumed this relationship between talking and thinking. Ex: According to Buddhist teaching, one can acquire insight without being stained by impurities by engaging in the practice of meditation. Taoist teaching emphasizes how through the practice of silence, internal visualization, concentration, and regulation of breathing "Supreme Truth" may be realized. These ancient traditions have shaped cultural socialization practices. And so American middle class mothers speak much more to their children than do Japanese middle class mothers; Chinese infants starting at 7 months of age vocalize less than European American infants in response to laboratory events; and Japanese children produce fewer utterances per turn than North American children, and they use verbal expression to communicate emotions less frequently than do American children.

Low Context Culture

There is less involvement among individuals, and there is less shared information to guide behaviour. Its necessary for people to communicated in more explicit detail, because others are less able to fill in the gaps of what isn't said aloud. North Americans and Western nations typically are low context cultures.

What do the eye tracking, picture backgrounds, and line figure tasks suggest about cognition and culture?

These studies suggest that when people from different cultures are looking at the same scene they are seeing it differently, with Westerners allocating more of their attention to focal objects and Easterners allocating more of their attention to background objects. This shows how socialization practices, Westerners on individuals and Easterners on relationships, can bias automatic attentional processes.

Analytic Attention

These thinkers perceive the world as consisting of concrete objects and would be more likely to focus attention on separate parts of a scene with those parts representing discrete objects of interest

Where do the origins of holistic and analytic thinking come from?

They are argued to arise from the different social experiences people have within individualistic and collectivistic societies. Collective societies tend to be socialized relational contexts and have attention directed toward relational concerns. Individualistic societies tend to be more likely to be socialized to be independent and have their attention focused on objects. These cultural experiences lead people to have either primarily independent or interdependent self-concept.

How do East Asians view themselves?

They are more likely to provide contradictory statements about their personalities or on open-ended questionaries. They have contradictory self-views but less consistency in their self-concepts.

What is most likely to be an East Asian reasoning style?

They are more likely to use holistic reasoning in a situation when there is a conflict between an analytic and a holistic situation. They are aware of the countless ways that things in the world are related to each other. They see actions as having distal, unexpected consequences. They see the world as having many overlapping and related events. Everything is fundamentally interconnected. Reality is in flux.

How do people with independent self-concepts understand others?

They focus on inner attributes and attend less to relationships.

How do Americans see change?

They see it as static and predictable.

How do people with interdependent self-concepts understand others?

They tend to conceive people in terms of their relationships with others.

Principle of the Excluded Middle Way

This principle holds that any statement is either true or false. A or B and not A and B. A person must either be a student or a non-student; they cannot be both a student and a non student.

Principle of Identity

This principle holds that each thing is identical with itself. Ex: A equals A / A student and a student are identical.

Principle of Non-Contradiction

This principle holds that no statement can be both true and false. A cannot equal not -A or A student is not a non-student.

Do Japanese grow up in busier environments than Americans?

Those from East Asia tend to grow up in busier environments, where there is more to integrate and make sense of, than those from North America. This in turn seems to enable East Asians to better process information in busier environments. A study using a fixed set of rules, took pictures of hotels and schools in various locations of Japan and the United States and compared the number of boundaries and edges in the scenes. They found the Japanese scenes contained many more boundaries and edges than did the American scenes. Those who grow up in Japan do grow up in more complex environments than those who grow up in America.

Situational Attributions

Trying to explain one's behaviour in terms of the contextual variables. Trying to understand a person's behaviour by considering the situation that may be influencing them and is a holistic way of thinking. Considering the individual's relations with their context.

Cognition and Western Views

Western views may be represented by three principles: 1) Principle of Identity: This principle holds that each thing is identical with itself. A equals A. 2) Principle of Non-Contradiction: This principle holds that no statement can be both true and false. A cannot equal not -A. 3) Principle of the Excluded Middle Way: This principle holds that any statement is either true or false. A or B and not A and B or a person must either be a student or a non-student; they cannot be both a student and a non student.

Dispositional Attributions

Westerners explain people's behaviour in terms of underlying dispositions. Trying to understand someone by their inner characteristics, an extension of analytic thinking. Trying to understand inner qualities such as personality traits.

General Comments about Creativity - East Vs. West

Westerners, likely because of their emphasis on individualism, tend to produce more ideas and breakthrough ideas. Easterners, perhaps because of their emphasis on collectivism, tend to produce useful ideas and incremental ideas. Nobel prizes have been disproportionately awarded to people in Western cultures (especially Switzerland) with relatively few being awarded to people in East Asian countries, particularly China. Why? Socratic learning styles originating in Greece focused on self-discovery, Confucian learning styles emphasized the mastery of material.

When do East Asians excel in analytic reasoning strategies?

When doing most science and math problems. They excel in analytical problems.

Attention

Where one's cognitive activity is directed or focused.

Western Vs. Eastern Views

Whereas Chinese are more likely to prefer a compromise approach (middle way), Americans are more likely to prefer a differentiation approach (right or wrong).

Research on Linear and Cyclical Thinking - East vs. West

Whereas East Asians tend to see trends in a cyclical manner (going up and down,increasing and decreasing), Westerners tend to see trends in a more linear manner (as either going up or down, increasing or decreasing). When Chinese and American participants were asked what they thought might happen given a number of trends (global economic growth rates or global death rates from cancer), Chinese participants were almost twice as likely as their American counterparts to indicate the trends would reverse direction in the future. And another study found, relative to Canadians, Chinese are more willing to buy stocks that are falling in value and sell stocks that are rising in value.

Rorschach Ink Blots - Holistic vs. Analytic Thinkers

Whereas analytic thinkers tend to focus on discrete parts of a scene, focusing on objects of interest, holistic thinkers tend to focus on the scene as an interrelated whole and direct their attention more broadly, across the entire scene. When researchers asked European-Americans and Chinese-Americans to describe what they saw in Rorschach Ink Blots, European-American descriptions seem to be based on what they saw in one part of the ink blot, whereas Chinese-Americans descriptions seem to be based on the entire ink blot.

Do Easterners and Westerners rely on different brain areas to process information in scenes?

Yes and these differences become more pronounced the longer people are ensconced in their respective cultures. A study looked at whether Westerners and East Asians use different brain areas when processing a visual scene? American and East Asian participants placed in an fMRI scanner and were shown pictures of a target object alone, a background scene with no discernible target object, and a distinct target object against a meaningful background. While few neural differences emerged for backgrounds and contexts, considerable neural differences were found for objects, with Americans activating more regions implicated in object processing than East Asians, including: the left middle temporal gyrus (involved in retrieval of sematic knowledge about objects), angular gyrus (cues access to verbal sematic knowledge about objects), and right superior temporal/supramarginal gyrus (codes spatial information, such as object location). People from different cultures rely on different brain regions to process information in visual scenes, with Americans showing greater activation of brain areas associated with processing focal objects. And other research suggests these differences become more pronounced as people age, with neural contrasts between elderly Westerners and elderly East Asians being clearer still

Do Westerners tend to make dispositional attributions, and do Easterners tend to make situational attributions?

Yes, a study asked Americans and Indians to describe others and they found that Americans emphasize personal dispositions, while Indians emphasize situational actions in their descriptions. Americans might say, "She is friendly," Indians might say, "She brings cakes to my family on festival days." And whereas Americans might say, "He is aggressive and hostile," Indians might say, "He shouts curses at his neighbors."