Thinking Critically About Your Own Culture

Critical Thinking in Cross-Cultural Psychology

What luck for rulers that men do not think.

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945)—Nazi leader of Germany during World War II

It’s good to be open-minded, but not so open that your brains fall out.

Jacob Needleman (b. 1934)—contemporary American writer

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

Albert Einstein (1879–1955)—German-Swiss-American physicist

THIS STORY COULD have been told in New Orleans. Or maybe in New York. Or perhaps in Tokyo, Cape Town, or Buenos Aires. A woman walks into a doctor’s office complaining that she’s a zombie. The doctor, trying his best to convince her otherwise, says, “You’re walking and talking, aren’t you?”

“Zombies walk and talk,” replies the patient.

“Well, you’re breathing, too.”

“Yes, but zombies breathe.”

“Okay, what don’t zombies do? Do they bleed?”

“No, of course not,” says the patient.

The doctor replies, “Good. Then I’m going to stick this needle into your arm, and we’ll see if your idea is right or wrong.”

So he plunges the needle deep into the woman’s arm, and, sure enough, blood starts to pour out of the wound. The woman is aghast. In utter dismay, she turns to the doctor and says, “My God, I was wrong…. Zombies do bleed.”

What is the moral of this story? Compelling facts are quite often not compelling enough. What matters more is our interpretation of these facts. One of the most significant characteristics of our thinking is the way in which we become personally invested in—and then tightly cling to—our opinions, beliefs, and interpretations. This tendency, called the belief perseverance effect, can frequently lead us to distort, minimize, or even ignore any facts that run contrary to our “personal” reality.

Thinking is one of the most essential of all human characteristics. It is intrinsic to almost everything we do. But do we ever think about thinking? How often do we subject our thinking process to critical analysis?

Educators rightfully profess that learning how to think critically is one of the most vital and indispensable components of learning; yet specific tools for critical thinking are rarely, if ever, provided to us. Thus, although we may be convinced of the value of critical thinking, we are left not knowing quite what to do about it.

Herein lies the theme of this chapter, the express purpose of which is to improve your thinking skills, to teach you to think critically, to help you think about thinking—in a word, to promote metathinking in cross-cultural psychology. Metathinking is not a magical, mystical, or mysterious abstraction. It is not an unattainable gift that is miraculously bestowed on the intellectual elite. Rather, it is a skill (or, more accurately, a series of skills) that can be successfully taught and learned (Levy, 2010). The thought principles or metathoughts (literally, “thoughts about thought”) contained in this chapter are cognitive tools that provide you with specific strategies for inquiry and problem solving in cross-cultural psychology. In this way, they serve as potent antidotes to thinking, which is often prone to be biased, simplistic, rigid, lazy, or simply sloppy.

For the purposes of this book (portions of which were adapted from Levy, 2010), each metathought is illustrated primarily from the theory and application of contemporary cross-cultural psychology. Despite worldwide sociocultural variability, the essential universality of these critical thinking principles transcends the confines of any specific cultural group. Further, they can be utilized in a diverse array of fields, ranging from philosophy and theology to law, political science, history, sociology, anthropology, journalism, business, medicine, sports, and even the arts—in fact, in all areas of education and learning.

  The Evaluative Bias of Language: To Describe Is to Prescribe

Description is always from someone’s point of view.

Rhoda Kesler Unger (b. 1939)—American psychologist

It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose your own.

Harry S. Truman (1884–1972)—thirty-third U.S. president

Language serves many functions. Certainly one of its most common and most important purposes is to help us describe various phenomena, such as events, situations, and people: “What is it?” Another purpose is to evaluate these same phenomena: “Is it good or bad?” Typically, we consider descriptions to be objective, whereas we consider evaluations to be subjective.

However, is the distinction between objective description and subjective evaluation a clear one? The answer, in the vast majority of cases, is no. Why? Because words both describe and evaluate. Whenever we attempt to describe something or someone, the words we use are almost invariably value laden in that they reflect our own personal likes and dislikes. Thus, our use of any particular term serves not only to describe but also to prescribe what is desirable or undesirable to us.

This problem is not so prevalent in describing objects as compared with people. Let us take, as an illustration, the terms “cold” and “hot.” For material substances, both terms refer literally to temperature: “That liquid is very cold,” or “That liquid is very hot.” When we use these same terms to describe an individual, however, they take on a distinctly evaluative connotation: “That person is very cold,” or “That person is very hot.”

Our best attempts to remain neutral are constrained by the limits of language. When it comes to describing people (e.g., in conducting research), it is nearly impossible to find words that are devoid of evaluative connotation. Incredible as it may seem, we simply do not have neutral adjectives to describe personality characteristics, whether of an individual or an entire group. And even if such words did exist, we still would be very likely to utilize the ones that reflect our own personal preferences.

TABLE 2.1 The Same Person as Described from Two Perspectives
From David’s Value System	From Briana’s Value System
Old	Mature
Naïve	Idealistic
Reckless	Brave
Manipulative	Persuasive
Spineless	Cooperative
Childish	Childlike
Weird	Interesting
Obsessed	Committed
Anal retentive	Tidy
Dependent	Loyal
Codependent	Empathic
Narcissistic	High self-esteem
Lunatic	Visionary
Psychotic	Creative
Bum	Vocationally disadvantaged
Sociopath	Morally challenged
Dead	Ontologically impaired

The evaluative bias of language is illustrated in  Table 2.1  and the accompanying exercise. Let us say that two different observers (David and Briana), each with a different set of values, are asked to describe the same person, event, or group. Notice how the words they use reveal their own subjective points of view.

Exercise 2.1 The Interdependence of Values, Perceptions, and Language

Ready to try some on your own? Remember that you are to select words that reveal Briana’s personal attitudes and values, which are consistently more “positive” than David’s.

David	Briana	David	Briana
Problem	____________	Abnormal	____________
Failure	____________	Ethnocentrism	____________
Terrorist	____________	Chauvinism	____________
Hostage	____________	Cultural impurity	____________
Murder	____________	Discrimination	____________
Genocide	____________	Reverse discrimination	____________
Brainwashed	____________	Child abuse	____________
Handicapped	____________	Child neglect	____________
Disabled	____________	Handout	____________
Primitive	____________	Kleptomaniac	____________