The Geography Of Thought – East Brain, West Brain?

Another attempt to decipher why and how persons from the two worlds of the West and East “think differently.” You may remember our more lighter take on the topic Westerners Vs. Asians. We dug Richard E. Nisbett’s The Geography of Thought out of the relic box.

In the book, Nisbett provides evidence gathered through psychological research experiments, which attempt to support the view that, through cultural influences, East Asians and Westerners view the world in very different, so to say predictable ways. So is Kipling’s old “East is East, West is West” debate finally laid to rest?

Will the book help you understand your tiraak or colleagues any better? It’s not your beach chair reading, nor is it an emergency aid to suddenly make sense of all the disparities separating you from your kinds hosts. I won’t bother you with my own takes, but get some quotes from the various reviews dealing with this never tiring subject.

Nisbett would like to convince us that Kipling’s East-West line is true in some profound sense. Because of the very conditioning of our very own environment and brain.

The Geography of Thought helps the reader to step back and examine the way we perceive the mind, writes Nicolette Belletier on Serendip:

One particularly interesting point contrasts American and Chinese children’s books. The famous lines “See Dick run …” are much different than those in the equivalent Chinese primer which doesn’t describe actions by an individual but instead describes information about relationships between people; “Big brother takes care of little brother …” Later in the book, the author describes the way children in Asia, Europe and America are raised by their parents but also the ways that they create relationships between things. For example, when given a series of images to pair together, an Asian child is more likely to group a cow with grass because a cow eats grass. An American child would be more likely to pair the cow with a chicken because they fit into the same “taxonomic” category.

As I read this book, the evidence supporting the author’s points became increasingly overwhelming and it began to seem more and more obvious. In fact, I wondered why it never occurred to me that humans living in different societies would have a different perspective about nearly everything. My surprise demonstrated just how much I had created my own idea of the brain based on myself instead of taking into account the differences other people exhibit. However, it also became clear that differences in culture are not black and white, East or West.

Though we may think we understand that no two brains are alike, Belletier suggests, it is likely that this book will expose to the reader the extent to which we fabricate our own understanding of how the brain works and the way that we carry on daily activities based on the assumption that all humans think alike.

To make his case, Nisbett tackles and answers simple questions such as:

- Why did the ancient Chinese excel at algebra and arithmetic, but not geometry, the brilliant achievement of such Greeks as Euclid?

- Why do East Asians find it so difficult to disentangle an object from its surroundings?

- Why do Western infants learn nouns more rapidly than verbs, when it is the other way around in East Asia?

ThaiAsiaToday laments the East Asian focus of the book, but finds several overlaps, especially with Nisbett’s Buddhist-like conclusion of the “Middle Way,” a philosophical cornerstone of Buddhism:

If approached in the right way The Geography of Thought could potentially turn us all into detached, observant anthropologists, keen to improve ourselves, and thus our societies and the world at large, through helping us gain a greater awareness of our own culturally-influenced beliefs.

The Asian Review of Books focuses on this Nisbett quote:

“To the Asian, the world is a complex place, composed of continuous substances, understandable in terms of the whole rather in terms of the parts, and subject more to collective than to personal control. To the Westerner, the world is a relatively simple place, composed of discrete objects that can be understood with undue reference to context, and highly subject to personal control. Very different worlds, indeed.”

But is this profound enough? The reviewer acknowledges:

Nesbitt is right in pointing out that most people do in fact assume that everyone else thinks just like they do. But international business consultants, of which I was and still am one, will always tell you that “translation” means far more than just translating the words. Projecting one’s assumptions, priorities, value systems and operating environment onto someone from a different part of the world can lead to all sort of problems.

As if we, here in Thailand, weren’t made aware of this … It would appear, the reviewer goes on, that Asians can think more like Westerners when placed in a Western environment, and vice versa, just as people can learn other languages. Some of this happens naturally, and prompting or training can speed it up.

And that’s the point exactly. How Asian can a Westerner become and vice versa. How determining is the brain in the end. To what extent are we irreversibly conditioned. Is there a way out?

The Geography of Thought is a kind of “I knew it!” book. Someone finally put it into words. But then again, don’t expect a how-to handbook. If the issues at stake would be that easy to understand, we wouldn’t have to deal with the issues, would we.

Which is the New York Times‘ conclusion:

What is the point of this drive to divide the world into these monolithic units of East and West? Nisbett hopes that clarifying the contrasts between Western and Eastern thought will promote cross-cultural understanding. But anthropologists have learned the hard way that this kind of exercise – in which cultures are represented as deeply and homogeneously programmed with very different ways of thinking – often has quite the opposite effect, fostering or feeding unproductive stereotypes (or worse). It is hard not to feel that this is precisely the trap into which ”The Geography of Thought” has fallen.