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Lecture PowerPoint Slides

Benjamin Cheung

Chapter 9—Cognition and Perception

Cultural Psychology

Third Edition

Steven J. Heine

Chapter Objectives

In this chapter, you will:

Differentiate between analytic thinking and holistic thinking

Differentiate between field dependence and field independence

Understand how saccades are used to study attentional focus

Differentiate between dispositional attributions and situation attributions

Relate thinking styles with underlying attributions

Define the fundamental attribution error

Relate the fundamental attribution error to underlying attributions

Differentiate between rule-based reasoning style and associative reasoning style

Chapter Objectives

In this chapter, you will:

Define naïve dialecticism

Discuss the ways in which cultures differ in their creative thinking

Relate cultural differences in creative thinking to underlying cultural dimensions

Explain why cultures differ in whether the relationship between talking and thinking

Differentiate between high-context cultures and low-context cultures

Define the Whorfian (linguistic relativity) hypothesis

Explain the impact that the language has on various domains, according to the Whorfian hypothesis

Overriding Themes in This Chapter

Despite the study of cognition being held in high prestige due to its aim to study how the mind works (often at the most basic level), cultural learning still plays a large role as well.

Analytic vs. Holistic Thinking

There appear to be two basic systems for reasoning: Analytic and holistic reasoning

Analytic thinking involves:

Focus on objects and attributes

Objects perceived as independent from contexts

Taxonomic categorization

There appear to be two basic systems for reasoning. The first is analytic thinking.

Analytic thinking involves:

Focus on objects and attributes (e.g., focus on the trees and their attribute of having leaves)

Objects perceived as independent from contexts

Taxonomic categorization—categorization based on attributes (e.g., the beaver belongs to a different taxonomical category from the trees and flowers)

More prevalent in individualistic societies.

Analytic vs. Holistic Thinking

Holistic thinking involves:

Attending to the relations among objects

Predicting an object’s behavior on the basis of those relationships

Thematic categorization

These two very fundamental ways of thinking differ across cultures

Holistic thinking involves:

Attention given to relations between objects and among objects and their contexts

More thematic categorization— categorizing things based on their relationships with each other

Holistic thinking is more prevalent in collectivistic societies.

Analytic Versus Holistic Thinking

Cultural differences in types of thinking

Can be seen by comparing the different philosophical ideas of the Greeks and the Chinese

Platonic view of the world versus Confucianism, Toaism, Buddhism

This cultural difference was already present about 2,500 years ago as can be seen when comparing the different philosophical ideas of the Greeks and the Chinese.

Greek philosophers, such as Plato, discussed how the world is a collection of different objects, each with its own set of properties; for example, feathers have certain properties, and logs have certain properties.

On the other hand, Confucians, Taoists, and Buddhists emphasized harmony, interconnectedness, and change.

These cultural differences also affect where we place our visual attention.

Analytic Versus Holistic Thinking

The line is:

A—perfectly vertical

B—a couple of degrees off vertical

Is this line perfectly vertical or a couple of degrees off vertical?

Analytic Versus Holistic Thinking

The line is:

A—perfectly vertical

B—a couple of degrees off vertical

Analytic vs. Holistic Thinking

Holistic thinkers perceive a scene as an integrated whole and have field dependence

Field dependence = Difficulty in separating objects from each other

Analytic thinkers are able to separate objects from each other

Field independence

That task is reflective of an important cultural difference between holistic and analytic thinkers in terms of their attentional focus.

That is, analytic thinkers generally display field independence, or a tendency to separate objects from their fields, being more likely to pay attention to specific objects.

Holistic thinkers perceive a scene as an integrated whole and have field dependence.

Field dependence = difficulty in separating objects from each other

This difference in attentional focus also has implications for what kinds of things people remember when looking at a scene.

Analytic vs. Holistic Thinking

Another example of field (in)dependence

American and Japanese participants looked at an underwater scene with fish swimming, waving seaweed, and so forth.

Participants were asked to describe what they saw in these scenes.

After a while, the researchers sometimes presented the same fish with the same background and sometimes with a different background.

Analytic vs. Holistic Thinking

Westerners’ performance relatively unaffected by the background.

East Asians’ performance worse if the background is switched on them.

East Asians appear to see the scene as bound together, Westerners see it as a collection of parts.

Analytic vs. Holistic Thinking

This cultural difference is also represented neurologically

Cultural differences in activity detected in brain regions generally associated with object processing.

Moreover, this difference becomes even more exaggerated when comparing elderly participants rather than younger participants.

Analytic Versus Holistic Thinking

More converging evidence can be seen from eye-tracking studies, in which Japanese participants tended to pay attention to center figures increasingly less as time goes on, compared to Euro-Americans.

This difference may have gone hand in hand with the artistic inclinations in different cultures.

What differences do you see in these pictures in terms of where and how objects are situated?

Horizons and Context

In East Asian artwork, horizons are higher, allowing for more objects and more interactions (making them look “busier”).

Western paintings direct attention to particular focal objects

What differences do you see in these pictures in terms of how the people are portrayed?

Horizons and Context

East Asian portraits portray individuals as being embedded within the context with smaller faces.

Western portraits have larger faces, directing more attention to the individual as he or she dominates the scene.

This goes beyond the artistic traditions from these cultures from olden days—they are still maintained up to this day.

Horizons and Context

What differences do you see?

The following drawings are representative of:

(A) Euro-American female (B) East Asian female

When Japanese and Euro-American college students were asked to draw a picture involving a house, a tree, a river, a person, and a horizon, images like these emerged.

What differences do you see?

Comparing Euro-Americans’ and East Asians’ drawings, East Asian drawings:

Had higher horizons

Had 75% more contextual objects in the scene

Westerners thus seem to represent scenes differently from East Asians.

Understanding People’s Behaviors

Analytic thinkers are more likely to engage in dispositional attributions even when contextual/environmental constraints are made explicit.

Holistic thinkers are more likely to pay attention to contextual information and engage in situational attributions.

Analytic and holistic thinkers also differ reliably in how they understand or perceive others’ behaviors.

Analytic thinkers, who tend to focus on objects and their attributes, are more likely to engage in dispositional attributions even when contextual/environmental constraints are made explicit (i.e., perceiving one’s behavior as reflecting one’s internal attributes and dispositions).

Holistic thinkers, on the other hand, are more likely to pay attention to contextual information and engage in situational attributions (i.e., perceiving one’s behavior as reflecting something about the environment around the individual).

Understanding People’s Behaviors

Research with Westerners consistently finds that they attend more to dispositional rather than contextual information when explaining others’ behaviors.

This happens even when contextual constraints are made explicit.

Understanding People’s Behaviors

For example, American students were asked to evaluate an essay writer’s true attitudes by reading his/her essay espousing either positive or critical attitudes towards Fidel Castro (Jones & Harris, 1967).

Participants assumed that the writer of the pro-Castro essay felt more positively toward Castro than the writer of the anti-Castro essay.

As an illustration of how strong this tendency to make disposition attributions is, a study was done in which American students were asked to evaluate an essay writer’s true attitudes by reading the writer’s essay espousing either positive or critical attitudes toward Fidel Castro (Jones & Harris, 1967).

As is reasonable to assume, the participants thought that the writer of the pro-Castro essay felt more positively toward Castro than the writer of the anti-Castro essay.

Understanding People’s Behaviors

In other conditions, participants were told of some significant situational constraints on the essay-writers’ behaviors

One condition: participants told that the authors had been assigned their positions (i.e. pro- or anti-Castro)

Another condition: participants watched as another subject was asked to read a pre-written essay (i.e. pro- or anti-Castro)

But even when participants were told that the writer were assigned to write either positive or negative essays about Fidel Castro, or even when they saw someone read a prewritten essay that was either positive or negative toward Fidel Castro, they still attributed those essays to the reader or essay writer’s own positions.

Understanding People’s Behaviors

Regardless of the additional conditions with explicit situational constraints:

Participants assumed that the anti-Castro author had more negative feelings toward Castro than the pro-Castro author.

Same results were found when the writer was assigned a position to write about.

This is termed the “fundamental attributions error.”

These results show that people tend to ignore explicit environmental or contextual constraints on behavior—something called the fundamental attribution error.

This is called the “fundamental” attribution error because it was originally thought to be a fundamental aspect of human psychology.

Understanding People’s Behaviors

One study explored how “fundamental” the fundamental attribution error is by examining it cross-culturally—in India (Miller, 1984).

Participants (8 years old to adult) read scenarios in which a person did something.

Participants were then asked to explain the person’s behaviors.

Explanations were then coded for being dispositional or situational.

Understanding People’s Behaviors

American and Indian 8-year-olds gave similar attributions.

Older Americans made more dispositional attributions, but not situational ones  fundamental attribution error

Older Indians made more situational attributions but not dispositional ones  reverse fundamental attribution error

This also demonstrates how cultural differences often become larger as people get older, and they become increasingly affected by their cultural environment.

Reasoning Style

Which flower, A or B, is most similar to those in Group 1, and which one is most similar to those in Group 2?

Which flower, A or B, is most similar to those in Group 1, and which one is most similar to Group 2?

As suggested before, analytic and holistic thinking also affect reasoning and categorization.

Analytic thinkers find a rule and apply it; thus:

Group 2  Flower A because all have straight stems

Group 1  Flower B because all have curved stems

Holistic thinkers find general resemblance and relationship between multiple aspects—also known as associative reasoning—thus:

Group 1  Flower A because most have round petals, one leaf, and one circle

Group 2  Flower B because most have spiked petals, no leaves, and two circles

Reasoning Style

Accordingly, that’s what they found: East Asians were more likely than Euro-Americans to engage in categorization based on associative reasoning, reflecting holistic thinking, while Euro-Americans were more likely than East Asians to engage in rule-based reasoning, reflecting analytical thinking.

Reflecting the “blending” discussed previously, Asian-Americans were intermediate between Euro-American and East Asian participants.

Tolerance for Contradiction

One kind of reasoning related to holistic thinking may have come from China.

Naïve dialecticism = relative acceptance for contradictions

Based on a view that everything is connected and is constantly in flux—symbolized by the yin and the yang

Universe moves back and forth between opposite poles

“Belief A” is connected to and is always changing into its opposite, “Belief Not A”—thus, no logical contradiction.

There is also a kind of reasoning that is associated with holistic thinking in China, particularly the aspect of holistic thinking that leads one to think that everything is connected to each other.

This is called naïve dialecticism, or acceptance of contradictions; it is based on a view that everything is connected and everything is constantly in flux, as symbolized by the concepts of the yin and the yang.

That is, A is, and always will be, related to the opposite of A—they will continuously change into each other and are always in a state of flux, allowing for the acceptance of contradictions.

Tolerance for Contradiction

In contrast, Aristotle proposed a different system for dealing with contradiction.

He offered three principles:

Law of identity: A = A

Law of excluded middle: A = B, or A = Not B, these are the only two possibilities

Law of Noncontradiction: A ≠ Not A

This perspective does not allow contradictions.

On the other hand, Aristotle proposed a different system for dealing with contradictions, which does not allow for them to logically exist:

Law of identity: A = A

Law of excluded middle: A = B, or A = Not B; these are the only two possibilities

Law of non-contradiction: A ≠ Not A

Tolerance for Contradiction

Consider the following two arguments:

A sociologist who surveyed college students from 100 universities claimed that a high correlation exists among college female students who smoke and those who are thin.

A biologist who studied nicotine addiction asserted that heavy doses of nicotine often lead to people becoming overweight.

Consider the following two arguments:

A sociologist who surveyed college students from 100 universities claimed that a high correlation exists among college female students who smoke and who are thin.

A biologist who studied nicotine addiction asserted that heavy doses of nicotine often lead to people becoming overweight.

A number of contradictory pairs of arguments were created.

American and Chinese participants received either just one argument from the pair or both arguments. They then evaluated how plausible they found the argument(s).

Tolerance for Contradiction

Participants tended to view one argument to be more plausible than the other.

Americans who read both arguments were more convinced by the stronger argument than if they heard only the strong argument by itself.

Chinese viewed the strong argument to be less convincing if they read a contradictory argument—but a weak argument was now seen as more plausible.

Tolerance for Contradiction

These attitudes extend to other domains as well:

Attitudes toward the self

East Asians likelier than Westerners to offer contradictory self-descriptions (e.g. both shy and outgoing)

Predicting future trends

Westerners likelier to view the future as unfolding in a linear way from the past, while East Asians see the future in a more cyclical form

Creativity

Creativity has two components

Novelty

greater motivation for uniqueness

thinking about individualistic ideas leads people to generate more ideas

Usefulness

practical solutions to solve problems for the group

incremental improvements to existing solutions

Creativity has two components: whether it has novelty, and whether it is useful.

Novelty appears to be associated with individualism, in that individualism leads to a greater motivation for uniqueness, and thinking about individualistic ideas leads people to generate more ideas.

Usefulness appears to be associated with collectivism due to its focus on seeking practical solutions that solve problems for the group. They tend to make more incremental improvements to existing solutions as opposed to creating “game changers.”

Talking and Thinking

Different cultural traditions view talking differently

Western cultural traditions greatly emphasize the importance of debating, self-expression, and freedom of speech.

East Asian cultural traditions, on the other hand, have placed less emphasis on talking, considering producing more speech to be associated with knowing less.

Talking and Thinking

Talking is an analytic process—we can only specify one idea at a time that is arranged in a sequence.

Difficult to discuss holistic ideas in which multiple connections are simultaneously relevant.

This can be seen in the holistic process of facial recognition—verbally describing a face hinders subsequent recognition of the face (see Schooler & Engstler-Schooler, 1990).

Talking and Thinking

Heejung Kim tested cultural differences in the effect of thinking out loud.

She asked Euro-American and Asian-American participants to do some IQ test questions under different conditions.

One condition: Participants first completed 10 items silently, then thought out loud while completing another 10 items.

Another condition: Participants first completed 10 items silently, then recited the alphabet out loud.

Heejung Kim tested cultural differences in the effect of thinking out loud.

She asked Euro-American and Asian-American participants to answer some IQ test questions under different conditions.

One condition: Participants first completed 10 items silently, then thought out loud while completing another 10 items (the thinking-aloud condition).

Another condition: Participants first completed 10 items silently, then recited the alphabet out loud (the articulatory suppression condition).

Talking and Thinking

When Euro-Americans think aloud, their performance is relatively unaffected.

Asian-Americans perform significantly worse when thinking aloud than when silent.

While Euro-Americans were affected by reciting the alphabet, the Asian-Americans were not

Implicit vs. Explicit Communication

All spoken communication contains both implicit (i.e. nonverbal) and explicit information.

High context cultures = people highly connected with each other, much shared information guides behavior, less explicit information is needed for communication

Low context cultures = less shared information, more explicit information is necessary for communication

People in high context cultures have a harder time ignoring implicit information than people in low context cultures.

Implicit vs. Explicit Communication

East Asian cultures tend to be higher context cultures

Western cultures tend to be lower context cultures.

For instance, Japanese people are more hesitant to leave voicemail messages because Japanese people find it more difficult to communicate effectively without seeing or hearing the other person’s nonverbal information.

East Asian cultures tend to be higher context cultures, relying on a lot of nonverbal information to communicate with each other. Western cultures tend to be lower context cultures, with less attention paid to other people’s nonverbal information in communications.

Language and Thought

Whorfian hypothesis:

Strong version = language determines thought – without access to the right words, people cannot have certain kinds of thoughts

Largely rejected

Weak version = language influences thought – having access to certain words influences the kinds of thoughts that one has

Much controversy surrounding this claim

A lot of the research that has been covered earlier on has much to do with how our language seems to affect our thoughts.

There is a topic of study that examines this very idea—whether language determines or influences our thoughts. It is called the Whorfian hypothesis, or linguistic relativity.

There is a strong version and also a weak version of this idea.

Strong version = language determines thought; without access to the right words, people cannot have certain kinds of thoughts. This has largely been rejected.

Weak version = language influences thought; having access to certain words influences the kinds of thoughts that one has. There is much controversy surrounding this claim

Language and Color Perception

Although color exists along a continuum, color terms are discrete.

While color terms differ around the world, there are patterns to these color terms:

Number of color terms	Colors represented
2	Black and White
3	Red, Black, and White
4	Red, Black, White, and Green or Yellow
5	Red, Black, White, Green and Yellow
6	The above plus Blue
7	The above plus Brown
8	The above plus Purple, Pink, Gray, or Orange

An example of the relationship between language and thoughts is in color perception.

Although color exists along a continuum, color terms are discrete.

While color terms differ around the world, there are patterns to these color terms.

Cultures do seem to carve up the color spectrum differently, with different boundaries.

Language and Color Perception

Question: If people don’t have a word for green, do they still see green the same way?

Roberson, Davidoff, & Davies (2000) studied English-, Berinmo-, and Himba-speaking populations.

Berinmo = hunger-gatherers in Papua New Guinea

Himba = nomadic herders in Namibia

Language and Color Perception

One comparison color chip crossed a color boundary from the target color chip, while the other comparison color chip did not.

Researchers gave participants a target color chip, which differed in hue to two comparison color chips.

Participants ended up categorizing the target color chip in accordance with his/her culture’s color boundaries.

Participants ended up categorizing the target color chip in accordance with his or her culture’s color boundaries. In this example, while English speakers are equality likely to categorize the target chip with Chip 1 and Chip 2, Berinmo speakers are more likely to categorize the target chip with Chip 1.

Language and Odor Perception

The size of a language’s olfactory lexicon can affect how well people can identify smells.

For instance, the Jahai from the Malay peninsula have a much richer lexicon for smells than Americans do.

In a test of agreement on the naming of smells, there was much greater agreement among the Jahai than among Americans. The reverse was true in terms of color perception, which the researchers attributed to the larger color lexicon of English.

Language and Perceptions of Agency

Languages differ in terms of how agency is encoded.

Some languages commonly use agentic expressions even when intention does not exist

Some languages commonly use nonagentic expressions to describe situations in which intentions are absent

Languages also differ in terms of how agency is encoded—there are some languages in which, naturally, agentic expressions are more common even when intention does not exist.

There are also languages in which nonagentic expressions are more common and are used to describe situations in which intentions are absent.

Studies reveal that language does not affect people’s memory of who the actor of an intentional act was; but people who speak a language that naturally and more commonly encodes agency are more likely to remember who committed an unintentional act compared to people who speak a language in which agency is not as commonly encoded.

Language and Spatial Perception

Some languages have egocentric spatial terms (e.g. right, left, in front of).

Others use cardinal directions (e.g. north, east).

How does this affect people’s perception of spatial orientation?

Language also appears to impact how people perceive the world in terms of spatial distribution.

Some languages have egocentric spatial terms.

Others use cardinal directions.

Representing space in absolute terms is common among most subsistence societies in the world.

Chimpanzees also do not represent space in egocentric ways.

Egocentric space representation appears to be a relatively recent development in human history.

Language and Spatial Perception

Original stimulus—everyone facing north

Dutch solution in south-facing room

Guugu Ymthirr solution in south-facing room

In one study, Dutch-speaking and Guugu Ymithirr–speaking participants were shown some objects in one room and then asked to re-create the scene in another room.

One condition: They faced the same cardinal direction in the same room (north-facing room  north-facing room)

Another condition: They faced a different direction in the second room (north-facing room  south-facing room)

Language and Temporal Perception

The Pormpuraaw’s solutions differ depending on what direction they’re facing!

Language even affects how we perceive the passage of time.

Languages that are written from left to right track the passage of time going from left to right, and languages written from right to left track the passage of time going from right to left.

There are also languages that track time using spatial directions, such that time is always tracked as passing from east to west, in accordance with the sun’s path across the sky.

For speakers of English, which is written from left to right, people would array this series of portraits in this way to denote the person is getting older, as shown.

In contrast, cultural groups that tend to track time based on spatial directions, their arrangement will rely on what direction they are facing. If they are facing north, the pictures will go from right (east) to left (west); but if they are facing south, the pictures will go from left (east) to right (west).

Language and Math

Much of numeric cognition is a cultural invention—people have few innate math abilities.

Young children can represent numbers up to 3—anything more requires cultural learning.

Some cultures do not have number terms beyond “two” (e.g. the Piraha from the Amazon have terms that correspond to 1, 2, and many).

Number systems are highly cultural. For instance, we use the base-2 system or the base-10 system; some cultures have previously also used base-20 and base-60 number systems.

There are some cultures, such as the Pirahã from Brazil, that do not even have an actual number system beyond “1, 2, and many.”

That is, beyond the number 2, they have difficulty distinguishing between different numerical values (e.g., 5 nuts is too similar to 6 nuts to say that they are different).

However, they can approximately determine that one group has generally more quantities than another group.

It appears that more fine mathematical skills are a cultural invention that requires cultural input.

Language and Math

People’s understanding of numbers is often linear.

The distance between any two adjacent numbers is the same as the distance between any other two adjacent numbers

Children and adults from cultures with much simpler mathematical systems, perceive the distance between large numbers to be much smaller than the distance between smaller numbers.

Moreover, people’s understanding of numbers is often linear—that is, the distance between any two adjacent numbers is the same as the distance between any other two adjacent numbers.

However, children who have not yet received much mathematical education and adults from cultures with much simpler mathematical systems, perceive the distance between large numbers to be much smaller than the distance between smaller numbers.

Curiously, this perception maps fairly well onto a logarithmic curve, suggesting that humans’ default understanding of math is logarithmic but becomes more linear with additional training.

Summary

Analytic and holistic thinking possess fundamental differences that greatly affect how different cultures perceive and reason about things differently.

Language is a powerful cultural tool that can affect our thoughts and our perceptions—everything from color perception to mathematical reasoning.

Discussion

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