08.23.2005

Commentary

The Occidental Divide

Asians and North Americans see the world differently according to findings reported on Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

From Yahoo! News:

The researchers, led by Hannah-Faye Chua and Richard Nisbett, tracked the eye movements of the students — 25 European Americans and 27 native Chinese — to determine where they were looking in a picture and how long they focused on a particular area.

"They literally are seeing the world differently," said Nisbett, who believes the differences are cultural.

I read Richard Nisbett's The Geography of Thought a few years ago where he suggested that Westerners' and Easterners' brains are hardwired differently. He suggests that Westerners tend to be more individualistic while Easterners tend to be more wholistic. Funny enough, the reason I picked up the book was precisely because I am an Asian who grew up for the most part in the U.S. and I would often find that others would comment about how odd my viewpoint was. In retrospect, I tend to agree with Nesbitt's theorem in the sense that empirically, I need to understand things systemically before I feel like I'm comfortable with proceeding on a project. Whereas, in general, non-Asians, in my opinion, tend to focus on projects or tasks and don't need to know as much detail about the big picture.

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