Asian and Western Minds, Part 2: How They Differ

Asian and Western Minds, Part 2: How They Differ

Apr 25, 2016 | Books, Thinking Better

This article is Part 2 of the Asian and Western Minds essay. Read Part 1 here. Together, they are the fifth edition of an essay series on worldview, titled Between Jerusalem and Athens. Read the first here, the second here, the third here, and the fourth here.

 

In Part 1, we discussed the ancient philosophies that rooted the differences between the Western and Eastern worldview (see definitions of Western and Eastern in Part 1 of this article). Here, we continue with the specific ways in which they differ. Below are the key findings from a series of social psychology experiments done by Professor Richard E. Nisbett of the University of Michigan, which are outlined in the book The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently… and Why.

1. Objects vs. Relationships

 

When given a scene to observe and asked to describe it, Easterners tend to be more holistic, paying attention to more details in the background than Westerners. Westerners, on the other hand, focus on the prominent objects in the scene. For example, when a picture of an underwater scene with plants and fish was shown to test participants, Easterners were more likely to say, “It looked like a pond,” whereas the Westerners were more likely to say, “There was a big fish, maybe a trout, moving off to the left.”

 

“Like ancient Greek philosophers, modern Westerners see a world of objects—discrete and unconnected things. Like ancient Chinese philosophers, modern Asians are inclined to see a world of substances—continuous masses of matter. The Westerner sees an abstract statue where the Asian sees a piece of marble; the Westerner sees a wall where the Asian sees concrete. There is much other evidence—of a historical, anecdotal, and systematic scientific nature—indicating that Westerners have an analytic view focusing on salient objects and their attributes, whereas Easterners have a holistic view focusing on continuities in substances and relationships in the environment.”

 

Because Easterners pay more attention to the environment and Westerners attend more to objects, Easterners are more likely to detect relationship among events than Westerners. Cause and effects are explained differently—the Easterners would attribute events and behaviors more to environmental causes, and Westerners more to the actors.

2. Controlling Situations

 

Westerners tend to believe that they can control situations more than Easterners. Because Easterners see the world as complex and interconnected, their sense of personal agency is less compared to Westerners.

 

“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. And rather than attempting to control situations, they are likely to try to adjust to them.”

 

A large consequence of the Western view is the magnificent scientific progress in the Western world.

 

“Easterners are almost surely closer to the truth than Westerners in their belief that the world is a highly complicated place and Westerners are undoubtedly often far too simple-minded in their explicit models of the world… On the other hand, it seems fairly clear that simple models are the most useful ones—at least in science—because they’re easier to disprove and consequently to improve upon. Most of Aristotle’s physical propositions have turned out to be demonstrably false. But Aristotle had testable propositions about the world while the Chinese did not: It was Westerners who established what the correct physical principles are.”

 

“Westerners’ success in science and their tendency to make certain mistakes in causal analysis derive from the same source. Freedom to pursue individual goals prompts people to model the situation so as to achieve those goals, which in turn encourages modeling events by working backward from effects to possible causes. When there is systematic testing of the model, as in science, the model can be corrected.”

 

Indeed, I believe, this is where Western thinking have deep advantages, and why science—or modern science as we know it—was largely a Greek endeavor.

3. Stability and Change

 

Westerners believe more in stability, assuming that the world doesn’t change much and that progress is linear, where Easterners see change all the time, and that “movement in a particular direction…may be a sign that events are about to reverse direction.”

4. Organizing the World

 

Westerners organize the world into categories while Easterners emphasize relationships. When Westerners group things, they do it based on whether they can be described by the same attributes, certain inherent properties of the objects. For Easterners, things are classed together because they influence and relate to each other.

 

For example, given a picture of a chicken and grass, categories A and B, respectively, participants were told to choose the appropriate category for a cow. Westerners were more likely to choose chicken because cows and chicken belonged to the same taxonomic category, while Easterners preferred to group the cow with grass on the basis of their relationship; “cows eat grass.”

5. Role of Logic

 

Logic no doubt plays a prominent role in Western societies. It is used to understand events and also useful for argumentation. But if Westerners are concerned with reason, Easterners are more concerned with reasonableness, which means that they may “set logic aside in favor of desirability of conclusions.”

6. Resolving Contradictions

 

When confronted with apparent contradictions, Westerners are more inclined to insist on the correctness of one belief vs. another, whereas Easterners would try to find the Middle Way, transcend them and find the truth in both.

 

The Eastern principles in resolving contradictions are as follows:

  • The Principle of Change – the world is not static but dynamic and changeable. “Because reality is in constant flux, the concepts that reflect reality are fluid and subjective rather than being fixed and objective.”
  • The Principle of Contradiction – “because the world is constantly changing, oppositions, paradoxes, and anomalies are continuously being created” Opposites complete each other; they cannot exist without the other (Yin and Yang). Thus, apparent contradictions are in fact active harmony.
  • The Principle of Holism – “nothing exists in an isolated and independent way, but is connected to a multitude of different things. To really know a thing, we have to know all its relations.”

 

These principles compel Easterners to find the middle ground between extreme propositions. In the Western thought, there is a counterpart to the above principles in the Hegelian or Marxist dialectic: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. However, this form is seen as more aggressive because the purpose is to bolster one side and obliterate the contradiction rather than transcending the arguments.

 

For the Westerners, the principles of logic are committed to these laws:

  • The Law of Identity – a thing is itself and not some other thing. This thing is also consistent regardless of the context.
  • The Law of Noncontradiction – a proposition can’t be both true and false. A and not-A cannot be true at the same time.

 

For the Easterners,

 

“the rejection of conclusions because they seem formally contradictory can be mistaken, because concepts are merely reflections of things and it can sometimes be more sensible to admit that an apparent contradiction exists than to insist that either one state of affairs or its opposite is the true one.”

 

—

 

“Each of these orientations—the Western and the Eastern—is a self-reinforcing, homeostatic system. The social practices promote the worldviews; the worldviews dictate the appropriate thought processes; and the thought processes both justify the worldviews and support the social practices.”

 

—

 

The manifestations of these paradigms are reflected in the different ways Western and Eastern societies approach education, medicine, business–essentially all aspects of life–and can create misunderstandings in cross-cultural contexts. Results such as Nisbett’s are valuable for both Western and Eastern minds to understand each other.

 

Of course, the world is not divided as nicely as the East-and-West dichotomy. There are spectrums of worldviews around the world that we need to be more aware of, and I am now intrigued in mapping the world’s key thoughts to better understand humanity’s diversity and similarity.

 

Returning to Nisbett, it was hard for me not to abstain from performing self-diagnosis while reading a book like this, especially because my place of birth and upbringing is literally on the other side of the world where I currently live and work. I am both Eastern and Western, if calculated by the time I’ve spent in each world, near 50-50. Come back and visit the blog for an upcoming post on my personal cross-cultural experience!

[UPDATE: Read my personal, cross-cultural story in A Child of East and West, Part 1 and Part 2]

Image credit: Freeimages

Hindsight Bias: When Experience Works Against You

Hindsight Bias: When Experience Works Against You

Apr 14, 2016 | Thinking Better

Learning from the past—it’s the reasonable thing to do to improve and make progress. It turns out though, that its merit may well depend on what exactly we learn, since “looking back” is not without its downfall. Cue in hindsight bias.

 

What is Hindsight Bias?

 

Hindsight bias is the belief that past events were more predictable than they were before they happened. Richard E. Nisbett in The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently… and Why, writes:

 

“We tend to have two problems when we try to ‘predict’ the past: (1) believing that, at least in retrospect, it can be seen that events could not have turned out other than they did; and (2) even thinking that in fact one easily could have predicted [in advance] that events would have turned out as they did.”

 

The first pertains to the belief of the “inevitability” of certain events, which influences the mind to think of the cause and effects to describe this inevitability. Then, convinced of this causal relationship, the second follows. Applying the causal relationship, one should have known that the event would certainly happen. The problem with this is, it’s a fallacy. Nisbett continues to describe that certain cultural paradigms have greater tendencies to commit this fallacy, but more on that later in future posts.

 

Hindsight bias is what leads to phrases like “I knew it all along” or “I knew from before that this would happen.” Ironically, the people who commit this fallacy may sound like experts, gifted with certain prescience of events, and may become the go-to sources for future predictions. You’ve seen them on TV—people get over-credited for predictive knowledge because they say so-and-so should have known and done something so this other thing would have happened. The key illusion here is the belief that they understand the past–they have a model to explain the past–which they use to predict the future, while in fact they understand the past much less than they think they do.

 

The Mind That Cannot Revert Itself

 

In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman explains some of the mechanism that causes hindsight bias:

 

“A general limitation of the human mind is its imperfect ability to reconstruct past states of knowledge, or beliefs that have changed. Once you adopt a new view of the world (or of any part of it), you immediately lost much of your ability to recall what you used to believe before your mind changed.”

 

He continues to describe a psychology experiment to illustrate this point:

 

“Choosing a topic on which minds are not completely made up–say, the death penalty–the experimenter carefully measures people’s attitudes. Next, the participants see or hear a persuasive pro or con message. Then the experimenter measures people’s attitudes again; they usually are closer to the persuasive message they were exposed to. Finally, the participants report the opinion they held beforehand. This task turns out to be surprisingly difficult. Asked to reconstruct their former beliefs, people retrieve their current ones instead–an instance of substitution–and many cannot believe that they ever felt differently.” 

 

Because the mind has a hard time reproducing its less knowledgeable state, over-simplification of the past or overconfidence happens.

 

“Your inability to reconstruct past beliefs will inevitably cause you to underestimate the extent to which you were surprised by past events.”

 

The less knowledgeable me saw things as complicated. But once I know, I couldn’t believe that a previous me ever thought things as complicated. It seems like there’s a limit to sympathy with my old self.

 

Asymmetric Perception

 

Our relationship with the past and future is very interesting. We know that the future is uncertain. I, right now, have many choices that could result in a plethora of outcomes. But I can only make one choice, and thus as I traverse through time, I will only have one version of history. Looking forward, I see a spectrum of possibilities, but looking back, I see only one. The fallacy arises if I believe that because I only see one history in my past, it is the only one version that could have happened while in fact, if I return to that point, just like my presence, I would have multiple choices as well. Other outcomes were just as probable.

 

This asymmetry of our perceptions with respect to time is a warning when we learn from the past since “the tendency to revise the history of one’s beliefs in light of what actually happened produces a robust cognitive illusion.” The lessons learned, or our model of what happened in the past, may be influenced by this bias, which may produce a story that’s too clean and tidy compared to reality.

 

Hindsight Bias image 1

Event A and B at two different times

Hindsight Bias image 2

Perception at time A. A range of possibilities of outcomes, of which B is an instance.

Hindsight bias

Perception at time B, the belief that A to B is inevitable.

 

 

When Experience Works Against You

 

Our view of the past influences our perception of the future. If our model of the past is too straightforward, we may be tempted to extrapolate the same behavior in the future and oversimplify, which can be serious if you were a decision maker. The failure to consider various possibilities of outcomes can lead to incorrect estimation of risks and failure to mitigate. But even if you weren’t a decision maker, the loss from hindsight bias, to me, is its opportunity cost. The disbelief that the future could not turn out another way may prevent you from exploring creative options.

 

In many areas of life, experience is highly valued in considering someone’s suitability for a job, rightly so. Experience can also be described as the quantity of past events in someone’s repertoire. It’s how much history he has in a particular area. It does not always mean that the person is older, although in most cases it correlates strongly with age.

 

For a job that requires expertise, experience is a definitely an advantage. Sometimes, though, a task requires creativity, innovation, new ways of looking at and doing things. For this type of work, experience may mean that the person’s mental model may be too rigid and solidified to consider alternatives.

 

I’ve been on both sides of this fallacy, both as the guilty party and the victim of hindsight bias. As the guilty one, I’ve said things like, “I knew all along this would work or that wouldn’t work out” and giving suggestions like “I’ve tried that, it didn’t work so don’t bother trying.” The root issue is believing that the cause and effect are clear, discounting other factors that also play big roles. Maybe sometimes it helps the recipients of this ‘advice’, but what if it’s actually misdirection?

 

As a victim of hindsight bias, I’ve been on the other side of experts and been told not to hope too much from a certain pursuit, or that my idea won’t work because it’s always done in certain ways. But because I don’t have much pre-knowledge, I’m less constrained to think in their ways and more motivated to pursue alternate ideas. When it comes to thinking divergently, which I believe is necessary in making progress that’s a leap rather than incremental, there’s an advantage to being young and inexperienced.

 

The Impossibles

 

Is there an escape from hindsight bias? I would think so. A conscientious approach to detect hindsight bias in ourselves may fix it and free us from limiting/false models from the past, and acknowledge the statistical nature of our world. But if Kahneman’s right, that our brain cannot fully sympathize with its less knowledgeable version in the past, maybe we cannot overcome hindsight bias 100% internally.

 

Which is why it’s great that there are other people, and sometimes a new person for in a position or as a leader is the best way to bring in new approaches, new visions, and new solutions. There’s a quote a movie that I love, “We are too young to realize that certain things are impossible…so we will do them anyway.” If we can be the one saying this, then great! But if it so happens that we can’t, then maybe we should at least have someone else in the team who can still say those words, and counteract our hindsight bias.

More on cognitive biases:

Don’t Jump!

When Size Matters

OK, But Not OK. Not OK, But OK

 

Image credit: Uxmas.com

Rock of Ages: Structures That Last

Rock of Ages: Structures That Last

Apr 8, 2016 | Faith

Giza. Chichen Itza. Magelang. Three locations where ancient structures stand for thousands of years. The pyramids of Giza have existed for over 4000 years, built out of quarried stones, stacked and shaped into place. El Castillo, the largest pyramid in the Chichen Itza complex in the Yucatan state of Mexico, is made out of rocks forming a 4-sided structure with stairs on each side. There are sculptures of serpents on the sides of the stairs on the northern side. Candi Borobudur, or the Borobudur Temple, in Magelang, Central Java, Indonesia, is an impressive structure of stone carvings of Buddha facing all corners of the earth. The walls are relief panels with carvings that narrate Buddhist cosmology as well as daily living in 9th century Javanese society.

Borobudur Temple

Candi Borobudur, or Borobudur Temple, in Central Java, Indonesia

 

Each of these structures reflects the worldviews of the civilizations that created them. Both their function and aesthetics are filled with meaning, and somehow this deep meaning is communicated to anyone visiting its perimeters. When you come close to these structures, they generate a reaction in the soul.

Pyramid and sphinx

Pyramid and sphinx of Giza, Egypt. Credit: Freeimages

 

In Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down, reportedly one of the influential books that Elon Musk read when he first thought about building SpaceX, structural engineer J. E. Gordon reflects on structures and aesthetics in his first chapter:

 

“…although most artefacts are not primarily concerned with making an emotional or aesthetic effect, it is highly important to realize that there can be no such thing as an emotionally neutral statement. This is true whether the medium be speech or writing or painting or technological design. Whether we mean it or not, every single thing we design and make will have some kind of subjective impact, for good or bad, over and above its overtly rational purpose.”

 

Gordon contrasts the artefacts of the eighteenth century, which “seem to many of us to be at least pleasing and sometimes incomparably beautiful,” to the works of modern man—modern is a relative term–which is not so much filled with “active ugliness” as the “prevalence of the dull and the commonplace.”

 

“…man does not live by safety and efficiency alone, and we have to face the fact that, visually, the world is becoming an increasingly depressing place… Far too seldom is the heart rejoiced or does one feel any better or happier for looking at the works of modern man.”

 

It seems to me that the grandeur of exceptional structures lies in the spiritual aspect of the work, which is often the source of excellence that makes them out of the ordinary.

 

Ancient Engineering

 

On why these ancient structures last, I am toying with conjectures here. I’d defer to the civil engineers and architects to supply the scientific explanation.

 

Pyramids and temples were built by their creators to last. Whether it was a tribute to kings, ancestors, or gods, these structures reflected their beliefs about life and the afterlife. This to them was a perpetual reality that would never change. Why would it, if this was how the world worked? The bodies of past Pharaohs were not placed there temporarily, nor Buddhas arbitrarily placed in random directions. They were designed with intention of permanence.

 

If these structures were meant to last, they needed to be built in a certain way, much like the difference in attitude and approach when I know I’m making something for temporary use or for ever. Intent drives content, which in turn informs method.

 

The pyramid-like shape of these 3 structures to me seems very stable, although I would here open myself to counter examples that show other equally stable shapes. Admittedly, these 3 examples are simply based on my personal exposures, a lecture I heard recently on Egyptology, my recent visit to Chichen Itza, and my visit and pride in a notable accomplishment of my home country’s past civilizations.

 

Gordon also writes that pre-metallic structures of the past probably ‘force’ their engineers to think deeply about loads and stresses on the materials at their disposal:

 

“To make structures without the benefit of metals requires an instinct for the distribution and direction of stresses which is by no means always possessed by modern engineers; for the use of metals, which are so conveniently tough and uniform, has taken some of the intuition and also some of the thinking out of engineering.” 

 

Certainly there were numerous ancient structures that didn’t last, whether to due structural or environmental causes. Earthquakes, floods, and everything that could happen over the span of 4000 years might destroy even the most superior knowledge of stress distribution on solids. This, though, only makes our respect and admiration grow for the few structures that have survived history and the “primitive technologies” that created them.

 

Of Matter and Structure

 

There is also, however, something to be said about the materials used in these trans-millennial structures. They were made out of stones, probably because stones were the most readily available materials with load-bearing strength before the discovery, manipulation, and production of metals. Is it also possible that this choice material contributes to their survival?

 

Since metallic structures are relatively younger, it is quite unfair to compare stony and metallic structures on equal grounds. We don’t know (or, rather, I don’t know) whether metals will outlast stones, as in, if two pyramids were built, one with stone and one with metals in the same location, which one would last longer? We only have one version of history, so all we can do is credit the ancient glories to the stone structures.

 

As building materials, stones have notable advantages. They are by nature durable, fireproof, and nonreactive. They are not the easiest to work with due to their weight and non-uniformity, and they don’t provide good insulation (not good for places with extremely hot or cold weather). But their resistance to fire and moisture is a clear strength, unlike wood that is in fact fuel for fire and prone to decay, or metals that bend and melt due to heat. Stones will not rust, since the molecules are mostly oxidized and thus will not react with air or water. Further, it can be restored. Many of the ancient stone structures were once lost and re-discovered after many years of abandonment. But careful restoration could bring their old glories back, provided that enterprising people didn’t chip them away, and moss could be removed from stones. Compare this with common houses in North America, which, HGTV tells me, can undergo so much decay and destruction from being abandoned for a few years.

 

The Character of Stones

 

In the Biblical account, there is a section that flies over human history by giving each era a certain character through material symbols. In the book of Daniel chapter 2, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar had a dream which he forgot, and decreed his counselors to reproduce the dream and interpretation. Failure to do so would result in death. Daniel, a Hebrew prophet in the king’s court prayed to God and was granted the vision and its explanation.

 

The vision was of a statue with a head of gold, breast and arms of silver, belly of brass, legs of iron, and feet of iron and clay. Each section symbolized a kingdom, gold for Babylon, silver for Media and Persia, bronze for Greece, iron for Rome, and iron and clay for divided Rome.

 

At the end of the vision was a part that was a bit strange and discontinuous. A stone “cut out without hands” appeared, stroke the feet of the statue, and crumbled the whole structure down. This stone represented the kingdom of God, hence the discontinuity from the materials in the statue–metals refined by human civilizations–was fitting here.

 

Yet the choice of a stone to represent the kingdom of God was rather anticlimactic, wouldn’t you say? I would probably choose something majestic, like a big giant diamond to crush the entire human civilization. A plain old stone is neither flashy nor valuable.

 

Interestingly, however, the commentary continues to highlight that this last kingdom’s distinct characteristic was that it would last forever. Daniel 2:44 says, “And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.” The other kingdoms pass away, but this one stays.

 

Perhaps there is something here, given what we know about the material characteristics of rocks and stones. In other places, Biblical references to rocks mean stability, strength and assurance (e.g., building on the rock, rock of salvation, etc). God Himself is referred to as the Rock of Israel.

 

It is not uncommon for the Bible to illustrate the kingdom of God with unusual symbols; a seed, leaven, a net cast into the sea, and numerous other unexpected metaphors. They are often humble, simple, and commonplace. Yet each time, they reveal a secret strength that is not always intuitive to human thinking, like the seed that grows into a tree, where birds can lodge in its branches. The baffling-ness calls its audience to think of reality as God sees it, that not everything is valued according to the marketplace and human commerce.

 

In the choice of a stone in Daniel 2, its durability, strength, and stability certainly reflects a characteristic of God’s kingdom. That sameness yesterday, today, and tomorrow is a key aspect of the Biblical God. I don’t know whether the author of the hymn “Rock of Ages” was thinking along this line, but that phrase is awfully and appropriately fitting.

 

Photo credit: Johnny Loi Photography

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