PSYC14H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Yin And Yang, Broccoli, Color Term
CHAPTER 9 – Cognition and Perception
ANALYTIC AND HOLISTIC THINKING
Taxonomic categorization is most common among westerners (ex. asking which is least
like the other two: dog, rabbit and carrot – saying that the carrot is least like the other two
is called taxonomic categorization – grouping them according to perceived similarity
Thematic categorization (grouping based on causal, temporal or spatial relationships) is
common among east Asians – they would say the dog is least like the others since the
rabbits eat the carrots
Analytic Thinking – characterized by focus on objects and their attributes – more
common in western than in East Asian cultures
Holistic Thinking – represents an associative way of thinking which gives attention to
the relations among objects and among objects and the surrounding context – emphasizes
knowledge gained through experience rather than the application of fixed abstract rules –
more common in east Asian than western cultures
People with independent self-concepts come to understand others by focusing on their
inner attributes whereas people of interdependent self-concepts tend to look at people in
terms of their relationship with others
Researchers found that these holistic and analytic differences were also found between
the Greeks and Chinese almost 2500 years ago
Analytic thinking is evident in the platonic perspective that the world is a collection of
discrete, unchanging objects that can be categorized by reference to set of universal
properties – led to the invention of science
Holistic thinking was evident among the ancient Chinese in that their intellectual
traditions emphasized harmony, interconnectedness and change – led them to discover
the concept of action about 2000 years before Galileo did – Chinese had knowledge of
magnetism, acoustic resonance, and moon’s role in tides even before westerners did –
according to some researches, cultural differences in ways of thinking between western
and East Asia persist to this day because Greece and Confucian China provided the
framework from which modern societies have developed
Holistic thinking is found in manyyy places in the world – the pervasiveness of analytic
thinking has been overestimated
ATTENTION
One of the most fundamental psychological processes is attention, which is, at any given
time, where ones cognitive ability is directed
Analytic thinkers are likely to spend most of their attention on separate parts of the scene
since they see the world as consisting of discrete objects
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Holistic thinkers would direct their attention towards the entire scene since they perceive
the world as consisting of an interrelated whole
1949, gave Euro-American and Chinese-American a Rorschach blot test and results
showed that the EA tended to focus on a single aspect of the card where as the CA
described what they saw on the entire blot
Wanted to see if EA’s holistic way of thinking led them to be able to detect relations
among different events well
oDid a study and showed them two pictures – one picture then another picture at
various time points. Then showed them the first picture again and asked them to
predict the likelihood that the other pic would appear beside it
oAsian students had the more accurate estimates than Americans
Analytic thinkers show field independence – the ability to separate objects from their
background fields
Holistic thinkers show field dependence – tend to view objects as
bound to their backgrounds
Holistic thinkers should not do
as well on this task since they
do not focus on individual aspects
Research shows that people’s ability to focus on the rod
while ignoring the frame relates to their general social
orientation – ppl who attend to others show more of an orientation
towards the field (and are more outgoing)
oFarmers are more field dependent since they have to coordinate their actions with
others
oCatholicism, Judaism, and Atheists are more
field independent
Did a study with Japanese and American on how
well they were able to recognize a fish shown on
either the same background or diff background –
Japanese showed higher recognition on the same
background since they attune to the entire picture
rather than just individual aspects
This cultural difference can also be found at the neural level
oUsed an fMRI scan and showed them individual pictures, empty background
scenes or an embedded scene
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oAmericans showed me activation of object processing regions in the brain
(bilateral middle temporal gyrus, left superior parietal gyrus and right superior
temporal gyrus) compared with east Asians
oNo cultural variation was found in areas associated with processing contexts and
backgrounds
oCultural differences in object processing are more pronounced in the elders than
in the youngers suggesting that as people age, their neural functions continued to
be shaped by cultural attention patterns
Used an eye tracker to see whether people from different cultures were seeing things
differently or were processing the same information differently
oStudy which had Japanese and Americans look at some animated scenes on a
computer. Their task was to identify the emotion of the target person
oResults showed that the Japanese judgements of the target person’s emotional
expression was influenced by the expression of the people in the background
whereas for Americans, the background had no impact on their judgement of the
persons emotion
oProvides more evidence for the holistic and analytic thinking difference between
EA’s and Americans
oAnother study where they waned to know if people from two different cultures
were looking at the same thing (graph below – shows % of time they paid
attention to the central figure)
East Asians show more evidence of Saccades – the
extremely quick eye movements that shift peoples
gaze from one point of fixation to another
Westerners tendency to pay attention to
objects allows them to
outperform against EA’s on tasks
that require you to keep track of multiple
objects
These studies suggest that people from
different cultures do not see things the same
way – our eye movements occur largely outside our
control suggesting how deeply rooted these cultural differences in attention are
(pics in beginning of chapter) – EA’s paint their horizon higher than westerners because
the larger horizon allows brings attention to the depth of the setting as well as it allows
for all the different objects and places within a scene to be seen in relation to each other –
westerners paintings on the other hand draws the attention directly to the focal point
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Document Summary
Thematic categorization (grouping based on causal, temporal or spatial relationships) is common among east asians they would say the dog is least like the others since the rabbits eat the carrots. Analytic thinking characterized by focus on objects and their attributes more common in western than in east asian cultures. People with independent self-concepts come to understand others by focusing on their inner attributes whereas people of interdependent self-concepts tend to look at people in terms of their relationship with others. Researchers found that these holistic and analytic differences were also found between the greeks and chinese almost 2500 years ago. Analytic thinking is evident in the platonic perspective that the world is a collection of discrete, unchanging objects that can be categorized by reference to set of universal properties led to the invention of science. Holistic thinking is found in manyyy places in the world the pervasiveness of analytic thinking has been overestimated.
