Culture and Cognition: Part II Psychology 203

Cultural PsychologyWinter, 2005

Logic East and West

• “…the most striking difference between the traditions at the two ends of the civilized word is in the destiny of logic. For the West, logic has been central and the thread of transmission has never snapped…” – Philosopher Angus Graham

• “...it is precisely because the Chinese mind is so rational that it refuses to become rationalistic and … to separate form from content.– Philosopher Hsu-Shien Liu

• "The aim of the Chinese classical education has always been the cultivation of the reasonable man as the model of culture. An educated man should, above all, be a reasonable being, who is always characterized by his common sense, his love of moderation and restraint, and his hatred of abstract theories and logical extremes.“– Historian Lin Yutang

• “To argue with logical consistency ... may not only be resented but also be regarded as immature.”– Anthropologist Nobihuro Nagashima

Cognitive Differences: Logic vs. Experience

• Norenzayan, et al.: Typicality vs. logic

All birds have ulnar arteries

Do sparrows have ulnar arteries?

Do penguins have ulnar arteries?

Con

vinc

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European American

Asian American

Korean

Typical

Atypica

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9Convincingness Judgments as a Function

of Typicality

Cognitive Differences: Logic vs. Experience

• Norenzayan, et al.: Plausibility vs. logic

All animals with fur hibernate

Rabbits do not hibernate

Rabbits are not animals with fur

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European American

Korean

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“V

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Unbelievable

Believable

Valid Arguments

The “Socratic Effect” East and West

• Socratic effect: asking people their beliefs about the probability of logically related propositions results in their coming into alignment when retested

• Norenzayan & Kim (2002) Korean and American Ss• The price of dining out will increase• If stricter health codes for restaurants will

increase the cost of hiring new staff, the price of dining out will increase

• Stricter health codes for restaurants will increase the cost of hiring new staff

• Koreans showed less Socratic effect than Americans• Only found for negative conclusions

PRINCIPLES OF FORMAL LOGIC

• 1. Identity: A = A

• 2. Noncontradiction: A ≠ not A

•

• 3. Excluded middle: A or not A

Eastern Dialectism

• 1. Principle of change:– Reality is a process of change– What is currently true will shortly be false

• 2. Principle of contradiction:– Contradiction is the dynamic underlying

change– Because change is constant, contradiction is

constant• 3. Principle of relationships (or holism):

– The whole is more than the sum of its parts– Parts are meaningful only in relation to the

whole• The Tao

Proverb Types

• Dialectical Proverbs:– "Beware of your friends not your enemies,“– "Too humble is half proud”

• Non-dialectical Proverbs:– "One against all is certain to fall“– "For example is no proof"

American and Chinese Preferences for Dialectical and non-Dialectical Yiddish Proverbs

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Non-dialectical Dialectical

Type of Proverbs

Chinese

American

Conflicts to Resolve• Mother-daughter conflict: • Mary, Phoebe, and Julie all have daughters.

Each mother has held a set of values which has guided her efforts to raise her daughter. Now the daughters have grown up, and each of them is rejecting many of her mother's values. How did it happen and what should they do?

• School-fun conflict: • Kent, James, and Matt are college juniors.

They are feeling very frustrated about their three years of routine tests, paper assignments, and grades. They complain that going through this process has taken its toll, undermining the fun of learning. How did it happen and what should they do?

Percent of Participants Preferring Dialectical Resolution

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Mother-Daughter School-Fun

Chinese

American

TYPE OF CONFLICTS

Why Was Aristotle Wrong about Gravity?

• Argument 1• Aristotle believed that the heavier a body is, the faster it falls to the

ground. However, such an assumption might be false. Suppose that we have two bodies, a heavy one called H and a light one called L. Under Aristotle's assumption H will fall faster than L. Now suppose that H and L are joined together, with H on top of L. Now what happens? Well, L + H is heavier than H so by the initial assumption it should fall faster than H alone. But in the joined body L + H , L and H will each tend to fall just as fast as before they were joined, so L will act as a “brake” on H and L + H will fall slower than H alone. Hence it follows from the initial assumption that L + H will fall both faster and slower than H alone. Since this is absurd the initial assumption must be false.

• Argument 2• Aristotle believed that the heavier a body is, the faster it falls to the

ground. However, such an assumption might be false because this assumption is based on a belief that the physical object is free from any influences of other contextual factors (“perfect condition”), which is impossible in reality. Suppose that we have two bodies, a heavy one called H and a light one called L. If we put two of them in two different conditions, such as H in windy weather (W) and L in quiet weather (Q), now what happens? Well, the weights of the body, H or L, would not make them fall fast or slow. Instead, the weather conditions, W or Q, would make a difference. Since these kinds of contextual influences always exist, we conclude that the initial assumption must be false.

Figure 4. Percent of American and Chinese Participants Preferring Dialectical Arguments

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Persuasiveness Liking Persuasiveness Liking

Argument for Argument againstExistence of God Aristotelian Physics

Chinese

American

Contradictory Statements

• Statement 1A: • A social psychologist studied young adults and asserted that those

who feel close to their families have more satisfying social relationships.

• Statement 1B: • 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.

• Statement 2A: • A sociologist who surveyed college students from 100

universities claimed that there is a high correlation among college female students between smoking and being skinny.

• Statement 2B: • A biologist who studied nicotine addiction asserted that

heavy doses of nicotine often lead to becoming overweight.

American Participants Ratings of Plausibility in Both

"A or B Conditions" and "A and B Condition"

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A or B A and B

Condition

Less plausible

More plausible

Chinese Participants Ratings of Plausibility in Both "A or B Conditions" and "A and B Condition"

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Less plausible

More plausible

Agreement with Propositions

• About personality trait opposites:– How polite are you, how rude are you?– How outgoing are you, how shy are you?

• About statements opposite in implication:– The more one knows, the less one believes, or– The more one knows, the more one believes

– A person’s character is his destiny or– A person’s character is not his destiny

If Asians are Illogical, Why are TheyBetter in Math than Americans?

• Asians not illogical, they’re just less likely to use logic if:– Experience contradicts conclusion

– Conclusions are undesirable

– A resolution to a seeming contradiction is sought

• When none of these true, Asians as logical as Am.– Westerners can go overboard with logic

• Asians work harder in math -- now

Is it Language that Does the Job?

• Generic noun phrases more common in Indo-European languages

• In Chinese, no difference between

– “squirrels eat nuts”

– “this squirrel is eating the nut”

– Only context can tell

• Indo-European languages can turn any property into noun

– “white” “whiteness’

• Western middle class parents decontextualize: “doggie”

Language, cont.

• Western languages “subject-prominent”– “It” is raining

• Asian languages “topic-prominent”– In Japanese: “This place, skiing is good”

• In Japanese (and formerly Chinese): “I” depends on relationship:– Colleague, spouse, old college friends, child

• Western grammar “agentic”: “he dropped it”• Eastern grammar: “It fell from him” or “fell”• In English: “more tea?” In Chinese: “Drink

more?”

Figure 1

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Chinese Language

English Language

PRC Chinese in PRC

PRC and TWChinese in USA

European Americans

HK & SChinese in US

Attention to Object vs. Field

• Abel & Hsu (1949) – Rorschach whole card responses

• Ji, Peng & Nisbett (2000)– Rod and Frame Test (field dependence)– Covariation detection

• Masuda & Nisbett (2001)– Attention to salient object vs. background– “Binding” of object and field

• Masuda & Nisbett (2005)– Change blindness

Rod and Frame – Side View

Rod and Frame – Subject’s View

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Control Mode

Non-control Mode

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Confidence Judgments

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Errors on RFT

RFT: Errors and Confidence

Arbitrary figures

Control ModeNon-control Mode

Cov

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Covariation Judgments

Control ModeNon-control Mode

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Confidence Judgments

Seeing the Object and the Field (Masuda & Nisbett, 2001) Phase 1: Recall Task

Participants

41 American participants at the University of Michigan and 44 Japanese participants at Kyoto University, Japan.

Phase 2: Recognition Task

Fish with OriginalBackground

Fish with No Background

Fish with NovelBackground

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NoBackground

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Previously Seen Objects (Japan)

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Original Background

NoBackground

NovelBackground

Previously Seen Objects (USA)

Change Detection

• Japanese and American Ss

• Shown pairs of animated vignettes

• Asked to report differences across pair

• Do Japanese see more contextual (background and relational) changes?

• Do Americans see more focal object changes?

Construction still 1

Construction still 2

Changes in Scene Across Two Vignettes

American City

Japanese City

American Farm

Japanese Farm

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Focal Object Focal Object InformationInformation

ContextualContextualInformatioInformatio

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Changes Detected in Objects and Context

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US scenesUS scenes JPN scenesJPN scenes

ContextualContextualInformationInformation

Focal Object Focal Object InformationInformation

Changes Detected in U.S. and Japanese Scenes

Affordances in Japan and U.S.: Miyamoto and Nisbett

• Take pictures in US and Japanese cities– New York and Tokyo– Ann Arbor and Hikone– Two villages

• Compare complexity of comparable scenes – e.g. in front of post office, school

Electronics District – Tokyo

New York 2

Ratings of Complexity

• Number of objects

• Ambiguity of boundaries

• Degree to which parts of scene are invisible

• Orderliness vs. chaos

Medium Size Japanese City

Schematic

Number of Physical Features Found by Program

• Number of Objects Defined at Two Sizes

Quilts

Relative Task Absolute Task

Target Stimulus

Framed Line Task:

Results: Experiment 1

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Japanese Americans

Culture

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Absolute Task

Relative Task

Eyetracking (Chua and Nisbett, 2005)

Study Phase

Chinese have poorer memory for old objects in new backgrounds p = .03)

Chinese made more saccades to each picture presentation than Americans (p < .05).

Chinese made more saccades to the background thanAmericans (p = .003). There was no difference in

number of saccades to the object.

Americans look at the object sooner than Chinese (p = .02).

Americans have longer fixations than Chinese (p = .01).Compared to Chinese, Americans also have substantially longer fixations on objects than on backgrounds (p = .02).

Esthetic Preferences: Object vs. ContextMasuda, Gonzalez and Nisbett (2005)

• Drawings: house, person, river, tree, horizon– Anticipations: more detail about background

for Japanese; higher horizons for Japanese

• Photographs: person in some setting– Anticipation: central figure larger for

Americans

American, Male

East Asian (Hong Kong), male

American Data East Asian Data

1. Studio-Sitting Model2. Studio-Standing Model3. Atrium-Sitting Model4. Atrium-Standing Model

Task

Narrative Accounts of Events Chua and Nisbett (2005)

• Personal stories (e.g., my first day in school this term)

• Stories they read (e.g., bad day in the life of a single mother)

• Videos they watch (no-audio vignettes from British comedies)

Anticipations

• Americans would report more information about the central figure

• Americans would report seeing more intentionality (attempt to control events)

• Taiwanese would report more emotion

• ? Language effects for the bilingual Taiwanese?

Americans made more references to main character

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Main Character OtherCharacter(s)

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Americans produced more intention statements

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Average Across Tasks

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Taiwanese made more statements with emotional content

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Average Across Tasks

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Are the Differences Confined to Asia vs. Europe?

• Kühnen, et al. (2000): Field dependence for Americans, Germans, Russians and Malaysians

• Knight, Varnum & Nisbett (2005): – Eastern Europe vs. Western Europe– Northern Italy vs. Southern Italy– Middle class vs. working class

0.636 0.614 0.729 0.8560

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North, high North, low South, high South, low

School, SES

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Does It Matter?• Medicine

– Dissection, surgery– vs. holistic practice

• Modularization• Law

– (lawyer/engineer ratio)– Conflict resolution– Contracts: sugar & snow

• Debate– Marketplace vs.– Consensus– S. Korea and N. Korea

• Rhetoric: structure of argument

• Science: In 90s, 44 US Nobels, 1 Japanese

• International relations– (spy plane incident)

• Human rights– contract or organism?

• Religion– Blend in East– Religious wars rare in East– Cycles vs. utopias

• Intellectual history• Education, Learning

and IQ tests

Intellectual History East and West

• Western dichotomies– Nature vs. nurture– Mind vs. body– Emotion vs. reason

• Necessary and sufficient conditions tradition in the West

• Quantum mechanics and Nils Bohr– Object in two different places at once (!)

• Evolution

• Primatology

Intellectual History, cont.: The Continent vs. the Anglo-American Tradition

• Big picture ideas vs. small theories and concerns• Anglo-Am philosophers: ordinary language analysis:

Gettier examples• Continental phil:

– Phenomenology– Existentialism– Structuralism– Post-structuralism– Post-modernism

• Marxism• Sociology: Comte and Weber• Psychology: Freud, Piaget, Lewin, Heider, historical-

cultural psych vs.• Skinner

Intellectual History, cont.: Linear Utopias of the West

Plato’s RepublicPuritanism, Quakerism, ShakersMormonismAmerican and French RevolutionsCommunism, fascism

Steady, linear progressOnce attained, state is permanentReached through human effortUsually egalitarianUsually based on a few extreme assumptions

about human nature

Education, Learning and IQ Testing

• Kim (2002) “We talk, therefore we think?”• Cattell Culture Fair IQ test (Park et al.,

2005)• Spatial tests of IQ • Liu and Nisbett (2005) State-dependent

learning• Watanabe (1998): Japanese children in

American schools

Cattell “Culture Fair” type item

Spatial relations item

Social Context Change Effects on Word Recall (Liu & Nisbett, 2005)

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European-Americans East Asians

No ChangeSocial Change

Manipulating Culture-Specific Cognition• Priming manipulations: Higgins and Bargh• Hong, Chiu, & Kung (1997): culture-primed Hong Kong

Ss• Peng & Knowles (2003): priming Asian vs. American

identities• Kühnen et al. (2001): I vs. we and field dep. for Am.; Cha

& Schwarz (2005) for Koreans• Kühnen & Oyserman (2002): I vs. we and memory for

context in which objects were seen• Masuda & Nisbett (2005): “affordances” of environment• Miyamoto, Masuda & Nisbett (2005): priming with Asian

vs. American scenes and memory for objects vs. contexts• Predict Leu, Liu, & Nisbett (2005)

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US scenesUS scenes JPN scenesJPN scenes

ContextualContextualInformationInformation

Focal Object Focal Object InformationInformation

Changes Detected in U.S. and Japanese Scenes

Degree of Overlap of Distributions