This chapter mainly talked about the differences in perception of the world; Easterners are inclined to consider relationships between objects and Westerners tend to categorize objects based on rules.
There were many experiments introduced, but the results and analysis were more unconvincing than the ones in previous chapters. In the first two experiments, my response was similar to how Chinese and Korean participants answered, but for the last two, it was the other way around. I thought the result could turn out in a different way depending on who you ask the questions.
Moreover, as I keep on reading, I noticed that 'Asian Americans' are often mentioned in experiments. All the time, Nisbett reports that the result of Asian Americans lies between Easterners and Westerners, but in my opinion, the result would be more to the Westerners' side. Asian Americans are people whose ancestors come from Asian countries. They themselves, however, grow up in American environment, receive education in Western way, and can mostly speak fluent English, based on my personal experience. So I think that their answer should be more similar to the ones of Westerners. Nisbett should refer more about the Asian Americans he had experimented on.
The section that interested me the most was 'Is it the language that does the job?'
"East Asian languages are highly contextual."(157) was convincing as for Japanese because there are 同音異義語 and these words require the context of sentences. In English, on the other hand, there must be a subject even in the sentence "It is raining."(157) Truly, there iwould be no subject when you describe the same situation in Japanese! When I read this part I totally sympathized with Nisbett, opposed to how I disagreed in the beginning part of this chapter.
After reading six chapters now, I wonder from what other aspects Nisbett is going to analyze the differences of how Westerners and Easterners think....
I still have two chapters to read(;o;)..................
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