Compare Eastern thinking and Western thinking

COMPARE EASTERN THINKING AND WESTERN THINKING
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(January 25, 2012)
Eastern Thinking and Western Thinking
It is clear that different cultures around the world think differently but they employ the same parts to do the thinking. All human beings use the same tools for perception, for memory and for reasoning regardless of their skin color, ethnicity, religion, nationality etc. In his book of thought Nisbett has clearly highlighted the fact that different people see the world and think differently. In his argument he relates such differences to be as a result of different social settings, different philosophies, different ecological settings and also divergence in educational systems. In his findings Nisbett has tried to analyze some of the following differences: why Easterners pay more attention to environments while Westerners to objects, why Easterners see substances while Westerners see objects, why Westerners believe so much in controllability more than Easterners, why Westerners see stability while Westerners see change, why Westerners use logical rules to analyze situations more than Westerners, and why Easterners seek the middle way when faced with a contradiction while westerners insists on correctness of one`s belief vs. another (Kenny, 2011).
In his findings Nisbett proposes that the source of all modern western thinking originates from the Ancient Greece and that of modern Chinese thinking from the Confucius times. He continues to state that the process of human thinking is not universally the same. As a result the differences that exist in the peoples cultural backgrounds are as a result of exposure to different experiences and not due to differences in cognitive processes. He continued to argue that humans can be able to think on the same things differently and also on different things in the same way. Nisbett in his research argued that most Westerners were confident that a set of the following principles were applicable to all individuals: That peoples desired to be different in many ways, that people were comfortable while they made their own decisions, that people are mostly concerned with their personal goals and interests, that people work in order to improve their self-esteem and improving their positive traits which makes them feel a sense of well being, that many people opted for equality as far as personal relationships are concerned and higher positions in case of hierarchical relationships, that no person should be treated in a special manner and therefore justice should be applied to all regardless (Kenny, 2011). People possessing the above characteristics were mainly found in Northern Europe and United States, and these characteristics differed from those found in East Asia.
Asians have a deep rooted cultural prejudice against individuality. This means that East Asians should not be self centered than their Western counterparts. It has therefore been noted that East Asians are more concerned on collective group goals and actions. As a result it has been concluded that overall success in mostly attributed to a collective group responsibilities than individual ones. Self confidence among the East Asians has been attributed to the fact that they are at par to group actions and decisions. Equality in treatment of people is highly disregarded. In his research, Nisbett noted that most Americans used to give thanks to another whenever they carried their responsibilities but in Asians each person was given as set of responsibilities and therefore there was no need of thanking one another.
No doubt the Self aspect of the Western is a mere imagination to the East Asians. To the Westerns it is known that individual characteristics are not dependent on the situations but to the Easterners they understand people based o their relationships with a group such as society, family etc. Therefore since all actions are group oriented it is clear that the fundamental goal of their social life is harmony. Also Easterners are highly connected to their in-groups than the out groups. Conversely Westerners are highly connected to their out groups than their in-groups.
Linguistically, it has been noted that Chinese does not have word for individualism and the word "I" is never used in conversation among the Japanese. Instead therefore a Japanese man mostly uses the word Boku or Ore to refer to himself while a lady uses Watashi to refer to herself (Majid, 2001). According to a study carried out, Japanese found it hard to describe themselves without mentioning a particular situation while the Americans found it difficult when a specific context was used. Majority of the Asians used their social roles while describing themselves to a greater extent tha...