East and West How They Differ in Thinking

¶ … agree with is the characterization of the way that Western and Eastern individuals view a picture of a train. This example shows how cultures (and the cultures of the West and East are different in terms of how they approach reality or the whole picture) can tend to view subjects in different ways. How it works with the picture is that those who come from a Western culture tend to hone in on a single aspect of the work -- a specific piece of the puzzle, or a main object, while disregarding other aspects or surrounding details. Thus, with the picture of the train, the Westerner will focus on the central car or will look mainly at the center of the picture. The Eastern individual, however, will take in all aspects of the picture because the culture in the East is more focused on paying attention to the whole, to context and how elements interact. The Western culture is more about independence and autonomy. The Eastern culture is more about integration and convergence. The way these cultures are impacts the way individuals from these cultures examine situations, the world, problems, reality and life.

From my own experience, I sense that this is true, as people I know in the West are definitely more focused on the problem in front of them and do not spend a lot of time looking at context or relationship between parts. Whereas people who I know in the East spend more time thinking about the integral relationship of things while tending to ignore the individual. So I agree with this assessment in the article and find it to be true to the real world.

One aspect of the reading that I did not agree with, however, was the testing of how individuals solve problems. The fact that some groups solved the problem silently while others solved the problem by thinking outloud or talking through it did not really register with me. It only makes sense that Asian-Americans who are first generation will have more difficulty talking their way through a problem, especially if they are caught between two verbal languages. But for those who are fluent in a language, talking through it will be no problem and will be just as easy were they to think through the problem silently.

For Asian-Americans, thinking through the problem silently will obviously lead to quicker results for the students as they do not have to bother to translate their thoughts into words that they might not be wholly fluent in. So I did not view this so much as a cognitive issue or as a cultural issue as much as a verbal/linguistic issue. For this reason, I did not see the value of the study in terms of the overall context of the reading. The reading seemed to be focused on how culture impacts perspective, but this test was mainly about language -- so I felt. That is why I did not agree with its particular relevance or usefulness.