I was a little nervous about this book at first-- what could it be? We've all heard stereotypes about "the East" and the "the West." About schools with neat rows of obedient, identically-dressed Asians who learn conformity and grow up to become formidable automatons in their factories; and about free-thinking, rugged-individualist American entrepreneurs who follow their dreams in some romantic epic. We also hear about boorish Westerners, made spiritually dull by modern life, standing in contrast to sensitive, mystical Easterners, whose devotion to ancient principles of yin and yang brings them a deeper understanding of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
So I approached Nisbett's boldly titled book with some trepidation. I didn't want a repeat of these hackneyed ideas. But I was pleasantly surprised. Nisbett is a professor who has done actual experiments to test whether and how Asians and Westerners conceptualize the world differently. In the end, I think he does much better on the "how" than the "why" (and could easily have left this out of the title). But overall, the book rates a "+".
Nisbett describes his research well, and it seems to have been done in a rigorous way. He is careful to explain that "Asians" and "Westerners" are of course very broad categories, and large variations exist within them. Nonetheless, clear qualitative differences can be found between them, and hence they are generally acceptable categories. Two minor objections can be made. First, almost all of his subjects were university students, which, although a popular group for sociology and psychology research, may not be representative of the population as a whole. And second, although a few studies included Asian Americans (usually second-generation people of Asian descent living in the United States), no studies included "American Asians" (Americans who now made their home in Asia). Perhaps the latter group is too small to locate for research studies. These two points are unlikely to drastically affect the research results.
What did Nisbett find? Without going into great detail, here are is sampling:
The commentary on the experiments tended to point out that the Western viewpoint was not the only one in the world, and that it even contained some weaknesses leading to conceptual errors. But this was not a Western-bashing book; Nisbett also noted that the way Asians think tends to make them more susceptible to manipulated statistics in arguments. However, it is a book intended to educate Westerners-- as usual, the "dominant" culture knows much less about the other options than they do about it. (I put dominant in quotes because that is not Nisbett's implication; I just didn't know else how to express it. Obviously Asians know more about the US through our products, TV shows, etc than we know about them). So we are the ones who need our consciousness raised that others think in a different manner.
The weakness of the book comes when Nisbett tries to explain why these differences occur, and how they might have come about historically. He spends a couple chapters at the beginning making a sweeping summary of Western and Asian philosophical history. Several key points are objectionable, and the total picture ends up looking simplistic. For instance, he actually says that among the ancient Greeks, many were able to make a living that didn't depend too strongly on other people (such as all those independent olive growers). This is ludicrous. He also says that Western medicine in Greece was focused on the parts rather than the whole being-- true now, but he missed by close to 2,000 years in applying it to Greece. The humoral medicine of that time was every bit as holistic as Chinese medicine.
And finally, he skips the entire Dark Ages in giving the history of Western thought. The democratic traditions of the Greeks are said to feed directly to the modern democratic institutions of Europe and the United States. In fact, the influence of the Vikings and other "barbaric" tribes that swept across Europe and into England were vitally important in shaping Western philosophy and law.
One interesting historical distinction is crucially important and worth noting, however. This is the concept of public debate, and the corollary of individuals having individual opinions that could differ from those of their friends and families. The Greek forum (and, one should note, similar traditions among northern European tribes) was never a concept that took hold in Asia. Given that this medium is prevalent in our deepest law and governmental organizations, its absence in Asia is clearly an important difference.
But I can't say Nisbett did a convincing job of tying together the large picture of why Asians and Westerners think differently. He mentions Confucianism and Taoism (and later Buddhism), and how these differ from Western monotheistic traditions, but then again, the Greeks were not monotheistic. He mentions a few other things about living styles and about language, which were intriguing, but not properly fleshed out.
Truly, I think the different influences on Asian and Western culture cannot be summarized in one book, nor can they be elucidated from Nisbett's research, nor can they be effectively brought to bear on such a small slice of knowledge. It is almost as if Nisbett added all this extra explanatory stuff to make the book a standard "popular science" text, rather than an explanation of research results. I would have been perfectly happy with the latter, plus a fraction of his attempts at explanation.
Overall, the "why" occupies a small portion of the book, however, and the "how" chapters that cover his extensive research are the real meat. Thus, the book is highly readable. And it does not slide into stereotypes, but looks objectively at the issues (and therefore actually counters the stereotypes by providing hard data).
I recommend this book to anyone who interacts regularly with Asians (which is an increasing fraction of the American and European populations). I do, and found it useful in thinking about some odd encounters I have had. The gap in thinking leads to gaps in conversation and style of acting. It also leads to differing assumptions, which can result in arguments or rifts if you are not aware of what's going on. Nisbett's research serves a valuable purpose: one of bridging the space between Western and Asian culture.
Copyright © Kim Allen 2003
