Author: Richard Nisbett
Translator: Incheol Choi
Publisher: Gimmyoungsa
248 pages.
| Important! Please read before you order! |
| >>>This book is written in Korean only. |
About This Book
This book may mark the beginning of a new front in the science wars. Nisbett, an
eminent psychologist and co-author of a seminal Psychological Review paper on
how people talk about their decision making, reports on some of his latest work
in cultural psychology. He contends that "[h]uman cognition is not everywhere
the same"-that those brought up in Western and East Asian cultures think
differently from one another in scientifically measurable ways. Such a
contention pits his work squarely against evolutionary psychology (as
articulated by Steven Pinker and others) and cognitive science, which assume all
appreciable human characteristics are "hard wired." Initial chapters lay out the
traditional differences between Aristotle and Confucius, and the social
practices that produced (and have grown out of) these differing "homeostatic
approaches" to the world: Westerners tend to inculcate individualism and choice
(40 breakfast cereals at the supermarket), while East Asians are oriented toward
group relations and obligations ("the tall poppy is cut down" remains a popular
Chinese aphorism). Next, Nisbett presents his actual experiments and data, many
of which measure reaction times in recalling previously shown objects. They seem
to show East Asians (a term Nisbett uses as a catch-all for Chinese, Koreans,
Japanese and others) measurably more holistic in their perceptions (taking in
whole scenes rather than a few stand-out objects). Westerners, or those brought
up in Northern European and Anglo-Saxon-descended cultures, have a
"tunnel-vision perceptual style" that focuses much more on identifying what's
prominent in certain scenes and remembering it. Writing dispassionately yet with
engagement, Nisbett explains the differences as "an inevitable consequence of
using different tools to understand the world." If his explanation turns out to
be generally accepted, it means a big victory for memes in their struggle with
genes. -- Publishers Weekly
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