Chapter 5

Half way through this book!

In chapter five, Nisbett mentioned that Westerners focus on the personality of the object rather than situation and Easterners focus on context and situational factors.

The topic that interested me the most was on page 127. It explained the diffrence between the ways of how the Japanese and American schools and college students and their teachers deal with historical events. The result was that 'How ' questions are often asked in Japanese school and 'Why' questions frequentlyin American classrooms. This point caught my eyes after discussing in our Friday's class about the attitudes of Japanese toward demonstrations. According to this study introduced by Nisbett, in Japan, there are fewer opportunities to ask 'Why' question already from elementary school. Students acquire that kind of education and they would be satisfied when just 'How' questions are solved. Curiosity might be suppressed, or not that extremely, but not prompted, and they also might not know one can pursue to under something without sparing oneself. Therefore, Japaneseareoften said to be passive, and defensive because they will not be aggressive, eager to know about something that stirred the curiosity. To connect this view to the discussion about demonstration, low level of curiosity and lack of a habit of lookingfor answers could be related to the Japanese passiveness toward demonstrations compared to other countries. This is what I felt for the first reading this chapter.
Another thing I have predicted concerns the part where it says '....Asians regard them as moremalleable.'(120) I agree to this and moreover, it probably is because Asians tend to care about the social relations and try to minimize friction with others. They are naturally trained who to do so unconsciously. As the chapters go on, this book gets more interesting. I'm looking forward to reading the next chapter for the first time.....