The Geography of Thought

Easterners are not as surprised by unanticipated outcomes as Americans are

people overestimate the extent to which they could have predicted the outcome of a given event

Westerners see fewer factors as being relevant to an understanding of the world than Easterners do

Watanabe labels American historical analysis as “backward” reasoning because events are presented in effect-cause order. She notes the similarity of this to goal-oriented reasoning: define the goal to be achieved and develop a model that will allow you to attain it. She also notes that goal orientation is more characteristic of Westerners, with their sense of personal agency, than it is of Asians.

Students are regarded as having good ability to think historically when they show empathy with the historical figures, including those who were Japan’s enemies.

Consistent with the lesser complexity of the world they live in, Westerners see fewer factors as being relevant to an understanding of the world than Easterners do

American teachers spend less time setting the context than Japanese teachers do. They begin with the outcome, rather than with the initial event or catalyst. The chronological order of events is destroyed in presentation. Instead, the presentation is dictated by discussion of the causal factors assumed to be important (“The Ottoman empire collapsed for three major reasons”).

As it turns out, this illusion is sufficiently powerful that even East Asians are susceptible. Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans have all participated in versions of this experiment and have been found to infer that the targets actually have attitudes corresponding to the views they read in the essay. But there is a difference between East Asian and American susceptibility: East Asians do not make the error if they are first placed in the target’s shoes

FAE: attributing behavior to a presumed disposition of the person rather than to an important situational factor

They found four factors, three of which corresponded roughly to extraversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness, the most robust of the Big Five factors in the West. Interestingly, the researchers found a factor that does not emerge in Western-developed tests, which they described as the “Chinese tradition” factor, a construct that captures personality descriptions related to maintenance of interpersonal and inner harmony.