Everyone has the same basic cognitive processes. When people in one culture differ from those in another in their beliefs, it can't be because they have different cognitive processes, but because they are exposed to different aspects of the world, or because they have been taught different things.
* Perhaps most important of all, the book has implications for how East and West can get along better through mutual understanding of mental differences.
1 Chinese think the world is a circle, and you think it's a line.
2 The Chinese counterpart to Greek agency was harmony. Every Chinese was first and foremost a member of a collective, or rather of several collectives- the clan, the village, and especially the family. The individual was not an encapsulated unit who maintained a unique identity across social setting.
3 Patterns of attention and perception, with Easterners attending more to environments and Westerners attending more to objects, and Easterners being more likely to detect relationships among events than Westerners.
4 Basic assumptions about the composition of the world, with Easterners seeing substances where Westerners see objects
5 Beliefs about controllability of the environment, with Westerners believing in controllability more than Easterners
6 Tacit assumptions about stability vs. change, with Westerners seeing stability where Easterners see change
7 Habits of organizing the world, with Westerners preferring categories and Easterners being more likely to emphasize relationships.
8 Use of formal logical rules, with Westerners more inclined to use logical rules to understand events than Easterners.
9 Application of dialectical approaches, with Easterners being more inclined to seek the Middle Way when confronted with apparent contradiction and Westerners being more inclined to insist on the correctness of one belief vs. another.
10 Westerners want to be distinctive, and are oriented toward personal goals of success and achievement, they find that relationships and group memberships sometimes get in the way of attaining these goals.
Asians are supposed to be less concerned with personal goals or self-aggrandizement than W. Group goals and coordinated action are more often the concerns. Choice is not high priority.
11 American is always thanking everyone else, but in Asian countries, everyone has clear obligation in a given context and you don't thank people for carrying out their obligations.
12 Asian countries are high-context societies, W are low-context. To the W, it makes sense to speak of a person as having attributes that are independent of circumstances or particular personal relations. But for the Easterners, the person is connected, fluid, and conditional.
13 "Tell me about yourself"
W: personality traits "friendly" "hard-working", role categories "teacher" and activities "I go camping a lot".
A: very much depends on context, "I am serious at work" "I am fun-loving with my friends"
(This is why MBTI is more difficult to be introduced to Asian countries...)
"I am what I am" vs. "I am Joan's friend"
14 Independence vs interdependence
Westerner parents" Would you like to go to bed now or would you like to have a snack first?" ask them to make their own choices
A parents make decisions for their children on the assumption that the parent knows best what is good for the child
15 Asians are more accurately aware of the feelings and attitudes of others than are westerners
16 Easterners are constantly being primed with interdependence cues and westerners with independence cues.
17 The whole rhetoric of argumentation that is second nature to westerners is largely absent in Asia
18 Proposals and decisions tend to be of the either/or variety because the westerner knows what he wants and has a clear idea what it is appropriate to give and to take in order to have an acceptable deal. Negotiations should be short and to the point, so as not to waste time reaching the goal. Asians reject the idea that man can manipulate the environment and assumes instead that he adjusts himself to it. Negotiations are not thought of as ballistic, one-shot efforts never to be revisited, and relationships are presumed to be long-term.
19 Easterners are highly attuned to the feelings of others and strive for interpersonal harmony; westerners are more concerned with knowing themselves and are prepared to sacrifice harmony for fairness
20 Dad: This is a pair of socks, are they short or long? Son:Short
This may seem to westerners to be an unexceptional quiz, by Asian standards it's quite unusual.
Chinese see world as consisting of continuous substances and westerners tend to see the world as being composed of discrete objects or separate atoms
21 a) A company is a system designed to perform functions and tasks in an efficient way. People are hired to fulfill these functions with the help of machines and other equipment. They are paid for the tasks they perform
b) A company is a group of people working together. The people have social relations with other people and with the organization. The functioning is dependent on these relations.
75% Americans chose the first definition. About a third of Japanese and Singaporese chose ut,
Westerners are the protagonists of their autobiographical novels, Asians are merely cast members in movies touching on their existence.
22 If life is simple and you only have to keep your eye on the ball in order to achieve something, life is controllable. If life is complex and subject to changes of fortune without notice, it may not matter where the ball is, life is simply not easily controlled. Surveys show that Asians feel themselves to be in less control than their western counterparts.
23 Westerners believe that things don't change much or, if they really are changing, future change will continue in the same direction, and at the same rate, as current change. Asians believe that things are constantly changing, and movement in a particular direction, far from indicating future changes int eh same direction, may be a sign that events are about to reverse direction.
24 In 1991, a Chinese physics student at University of Iowa named Gang Lu lost an award competition and later shot his adviser, several fellow students and then himself. Medias in the US all focused entirely on Lu's presumed qualities-- the murderer's psychological foibles "very bad temper" "sinister edge to his character", attitudes "personal belief that guns were important means to redress grievances", and psychological problems"a psychological problem with being challenged". Chinese reporters emphasized causes that had to with the context in which Lu operated. Explanations centered on Lu's relationships "didn't get along with his adviser" "rivalry with slain student" "isolated from Chinese community"
--''The bad seed' VS "The other boys made him do it"
25 There are three objects, chicken, grass, cow. If you were to place two objects together, which would they be? Why do those seem to be the ones that belong together?
If you are a westerner, odds are you think the chicken and the cow belong together. Chinese prefer to group objects on the basis of relationship, so grass and cow belong to each other.
Categories are denoted by nouns. So nouns would be easier for a young child to learn than verbs in the US. Relationships, on the other hand, involve, tacitly or explicitly, a verb. So children in China learn verbs faster.
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