Americans and Chinese Differ in Their World View--Literally
- From: "Lance" <lachenicht@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 25 Aug 2005 06:10:04 -0700
Americans and Chinese Differ in Their World View--Literally
A study of Chinese and American students has found that the two groups
looked at scenes in photographs in distinct ways. The findings indicate
that previously observed cultural differences in judgment and memory
between East Asians and North Americans derive from differences in what
they actually see.
There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that whereas North
Americans tend to be more analytic when evaluating a scenario, fixating
on the focal object, East Asians are generally more holistic, giving
more consideration to the context. Researchers have not known, however,
whether these differences originate during the encoding, retrieval, or
mental comparison stages of perceptual-cognitive processing, or whether
they might even be the result of reporting bias.
To try to pinpoint when these differences emerge, Richard E. Nisbett of
the University of Michigan and his colleagues conducted a series of
experiments in which Chinese and American students were shown a number
of images, each depicting a single subject against a realistic and
complex background. The participants--who wore an eye-movement tracker
during the tests--were then shown pictures containing the same subjects
on either old or new backgrounds and asked to judge whether they had
seen the subjects before.
As the team predicted, the American students homed in on the focal
subject sooner and longer than did the Chinese students, who paid more
attention to the background imagery. This suggests that the Americans
encoded more visual details for the focal objects than did the Chinese,
which would explain why the Americans fared better when it came to
determining whether they had seen a given subject before, even when it
was presented against a new backdrop.
Nisbett and his collaborators posit that these differences in attention
to object and context arise through socialization practices. "East
Asians live in relatively complex social networks with prescribed role
relations. Attention to context is, therefore, important for effective
functioning," the scientists observe. "In contrast, Westerners live in
less constraining social worlds that stress independence and allow them
to pay less attention to context." The findings are being published
online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences. --Kate Wong
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=00087E7F-7EC8-130A-8AB283414B7F4945
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