6 ms·

How Culture Molds Habits of Thought (2000)

53 points by denzil_correa 9y ago

joe_the_user 9y ago
The thing about an experiment like this is I don't know how you'd distinguish between "ways of thinking" and "styles of communication" here: "Asked to describe what they saw, the Japanese subjects were much more likely to begin by setting the scene, saying for example, ''There was a lake or pond'' or ''The bottom was rocky,'' or ''The water was green.'' Americans, in contrast, tended to begin their descriptions with the largest fish, making statements like ''There was what looked like a trout swimming to the right.''" The article talks about artibution errors, where a series of movements gets ("wrongly" or "rightly") translated into a belief about intentions. I'd say it would be more useful to talk of "attribution incompleteness" - how one speaks of a given scene needs the context of many scenes. So maybe, in my interpretation, both Easterners and Westerners inherently have to have the context of a large (and different) culture to speak of something as simple as a film about a fish. But that's my interpretation of the experiment and researchers gave their interpretation of the experiment and I'd say such openness to interpretation probably makes any conclusion fairly debatable. Just generally, psychology experiments have quality of doing a high school physics experiment except where the laws of physics are entirely unknown and generally vary from place to place in an unknown fashion. In an ordinary physics experiment, you can eliminate all but one or two variables and use your test to find these. Here, you have a multitude of variables and can't really eliminate any of them so you more or less pretend you can and thus add to a stock of debate and unreproducible results.
- jm__87 9y ago
  How is how you communicate not related to how you think?
  - majormajor 9y ago
    This is a very key question, not just here but for the entirety of the software industry's "we just want to see how you think" thought-experiment focus. Which I don't disagree with - but would take further and say "if your discussion of 45-minute problem is a useful indicator of how you think, your discussion of a real system you've built or worked on in the past and thought about at length is an even more useful indicator."
  - watwut 9y ago
    People adjust the way they talk to audience and some study how they shoud communicate. The way I communicate is heavily influenced by what I consider correct way to communicate. If you have me describe the scene, I may attempt to mimic the way last book I read described similar scene.
    - jm__87 9y ago
      Do you consciously think about what the correct way to communicate is before you communicate something in an informal setting? If so I'd imagine you're an outlier. For most people I would assume they don't think about this at all and do whatever feels most natural.
      - watwut 9y ago
        Yes I do, especially when the situation is new or weird in some way. Altrought often it happens after and I use different phrasing next time similar situation happens (e.g. I thing offline about how I told things and what happened after). I don't think I am outlier, because most people talk differently in front of different groups and also because I am more impulsive then most. In context of study as described in article, I would think about way I talk in advance. If asked to analyze situation, I would do some social situation guess to determine whether to talk about relationships, tech, whether use experience or go strictly by text. How I want to look like and which part of me I want to hide/keep secret would be a factor. The "feels natural" part is influenced by your previous experiences too, naturally.
bsenftner 9y ago
Being that this article is 18 years old, I am quite curious the current thoughts of the researchers, and to learn of any continued work in this area. Fascinating area of research. http://reasoninglab.psych.ucla.edu/PatriciaCheng.html http://reasoninglab.psych.ucla.edu/PatriciaCheng.html
Ngunyan 9y ago
> Both styles, Dr. Nisbett said, have advantages, and both have limitations. The Americans, the researchers found, were more likely to accept the validity of the argument, separating its formal structure, that of a syllogism, from its content, which might or might not be plausible. Asians, in contrast, more frequently judged such syllogisms as invalid based on their implausibility -- not all animals with fur do in fact hibernate. If there is indeed an advantage to the "American way" in this particular instance, I wonder what it is. I would like to think though that its down to having domain experience on the subject, rather than a different way of thinking.

53 points by denzil_correa 9y ago

The thing about an experiment like this is I don't know how you'd distinguish between "ways of thinking" and "styles of communication" here: "Asked to describe what they saw, the Japanese subjects were much more likely to begin by setting the scene, saying for example, ''There was a lake or pond'' or ''The bottom was rocky,'' or ''The water was green.'' Americans, in contrast, tended to begin their descriptions with the largest fish, making statements like ''There was what looked like a trout swimming to the right.''" The article talks about artibution errors, where a series of movements gets ("wrongly" or "rightly") translated into a belief about intentions. I'd say it would be more useful to talk of "attribution incompleteness" - how one speaks of a given scene needs the context of many scenes. So maybe, in my interpretation, both Easterners and Westerners inherently have to have the context of a large (and different) culture to speak of something as simple as a film about a fish. But that's my interpretation of the experiment and researchers gave their interpretation of the experiment and I'd say such openness to interpretation probably makes any conclusion fairly debatable. Just generally, psychology experiments have quality of doing a high school physics experiment except where the laws of physics are entirely unknown and generally vary from place to place in an unknown fashion. In an ordinary physics experiment, you can eliminate all but one or two variables and use your test to find these. Here, you have a multitude of variables and can't really eliminate any of them so you more or less pretend you can and thus add to a stock of debate and unreproducible results.

jm__87 9y ago
How is how you communicate not related to how you think?
- majormajor 9y ago
  This is a very key question, not just here but for the entirety of the software industry's "we just want to see how you think" thought-experiment focus. Which I don't disagree with - but would take further and say "if your discussion of 45-minute problem is a useful indicator of how you think, your discussion of a real system you've built or worked on in the past and thought about at length is an even more useful indicator."
- watwut 9y ago
  People adjust the way they talk to audience and some study how they shoud communicate. The way I communicate is heavily influenced by what I consider correct way to communicate. If you have me describe the scene, I may attempt to mimic the way last book I read described similar scene.
  - jm__87 9y ago
    Do you consciously think about what the correct way to communicate is before you communicate something in an informal setting? If so I'd imagine you're an outlier. For most people I would assume they don't think about this at all and do whatever feels most natural.
    - watwut 9y ago
      Yes I do, especially when the situation is new or weird in some way. Altrought often it happens after and I use different phrasing next time similar situation happens (e.g. I thing offline about how I told things and what happened after). I don't think I am outlier, because most people talk differently in front of different groups and also because I am more impulsive then most. In context of study as described in article, I would think about way I talk in advance. If asked to analyze situation, I would do some social situation guess to determine whether to talk about relationships, tech, whether use experience or go strictly by text. How I want to look like and which part of me I want to hide/keep secret would be a factor. The "feels natural" part is influenced by your previous experiences too, naturally.

bsenftner 9y ago

Being that this article is 18 years old, I am quite curious the current thoughts of the researchers, and to learn of any continued work in this area. Fascinating area of research. http://reasoninglab.psych.ucla.edu/PatriciaCheng.html http://reasoninglab.psych.ucla.edu/PatriciaCheng.html

Ngunyan 9y ago

> Both styles, Dr. Nisbett said, have advantages, and both have limitations. The Americans, the researchers found, were more likely to accept the validity of the argument, separating its formal structure, that of a syllogism, from its content, which might or might not be plausible. Asians, in contrast, more frequently judged such syllogisms as invalid based on their implausibility -- not all animals with fur do in fact hibernate. If there is indeed an advantage to the "American way" in this particular instance, I wonder what it is. I would like to think though that its down to having domain experience on the subject, rather than a different way of thinking.