Chapter 9 Flashcards
Analytic vs Holistic thinking
Analytic thinking: focus on objects and their attributes. Objects are perceived as existing independently from their context and are understood as “parts”.
Holistic thinking: Characterized by an orientation to the context as a whole. Gives attention to the relations among/between objects. Context in its entirety.
How do art and intellectual tradition exemplify some of these differences (analytic vs holistic) in Western vs Eastern Asian cultures?
Western cultures focus on analytic thinking. Where as East Asian cultures focus on holistic thinking.
(The origins of analytic and holistic thinking arise from different social experiences people have)
What is field independence vs dependence and how is this shown in the rod-and-frame task?
Rod-And-Frame task: A rod inside a surrounding frame and goal was to say whether the rod was pointing straight up. The frame around the rod however is rotated making it challenging. To be able to do this task properly you have to be able to ignore the misleading info (the frame) and focus on the rod.
field Independence: They can separate objects from their background fields. Analytic thinkers show this.
Field dependence: They tend to view the objects as bound to their backgrounds. Holistic thinkers show this.
What are some differences in Western vs. East Asian art?
Western art: Is more likely to direct your attention to the foreground by including low horizons or big central figures. They also aren’t as busy with fewer objects in the scene
East Asian art: Contains busier scenes. They have more boundaries and edges with a higher horizon line. (living in busier physical environment gives ability to focus and attend to lots of information at once. On posters east Asians had more words, links, and were longer than western
What are dispositional vs situational attributions?
Dispositional attributions: Westerners are more likely to explain people’s behavior in terms of their underlying dispositions. (ex: the waitress is slow on checking on us because she is lazy)
Situational attributions: East Asians are more likely to explain people’s behavior in terms of contextual variables. (The waitress is slow on checking on us because she is overloaded with tables and an employee just quit)
What happens when people make the fundamental attribution error? (FAE)
Is the tendency to ignore situational information while focusing on dispositional information. When we rely on dispositional informations without taking into account situational influences.
- North Americans are more likely to make this error.
- Other cultures explain behavior as due to roles vs personality
How much of those in India vs. The US make dispositional vs. situational explanations for behavior as they age across childhood into adulthood? (fig. 9.8)
- As Americans get older they tend to make more dispositional attributes and as Indians get older they tend to make more situational attributes.
- By the time the Americans were adults they showed clear evidence for the Fundamental attribution error by explaining people’s behavior due to their personalities. Where as by the time the Indians were adults they did not show any evidence of FAE.
What two characteristics make up creative ideas?
creativity is the generation of ideas that are both novel and useful. Creativity has to be NEW and WORTH WHILE.
Which characteristic is facilitated by individualism and which characteristic is facilitated by collectivism and why for creative ideas?
Novel ideas appear to be facilitated by individualism/westerners. Westerners prefer novel objects more due to a desire for novelty. (“breakthrough ideas”)
-Eastern cultures are associated more with usefulness–more “incremental innovations”. Collectivist cultures have emphasis on useful ideas. They put emphasis on modifying an idea to have better fit.
Which cultures tend to value talking more, and what is some evidence showing cultural differences in this value?
Talking is more privileged in Western cultures (ex: first Amendment right in U.S)
-Speaking is valued in the West because it is viewed as an act of self-expression and bound to thought.
What is the difference between a high-context culture and a low-context culture?
High context culture: People are deeply involved with each other and leads them to have much shared information that guides their behavior. (ex: East Asian)
Low context culture: Less involvement among individuals and there is less shared information to guide behavior (ex: North America/English speaking)
How would you define the culture that Morgan Spurlock stayed with in the 30 Days video and why?
Can be argued both ways as long as you have evidence to support it.
-I believe it was a high context culture for the family he stayed with was very much involved in their ceremonies and cooking together and doing activities together. It could be a low context culture tho if you talk about how the language isn’t being shared or passed on.
What is the Whorfian Hypothesis and how do the strongest and weakest versions of this hypothesis differ?
Whorfian hypothesis: Asks the question, “How much does the language we speak affect how we think?”
- Strongest version: Language determines how we think. We are unable to do much thinking on a topic if we don’t have the relevant words available to us (This hypothesis has been rejected because thought occurs outside of language)
- Weakest version: Is that the language we speak affects how we think
**Language and thought are interconnected
All known languages have at least how many color terms?
All known languages have a minimum of TWO color terms
How do color terms generally affect perception, memory, and categorization?
Perception and memory: Color perception and memory were largely independent from the color words that were in a language.
– Evidence that there is cultural variation in how people in different cultures learn and remember colors.
Categorization: People show evidence that their perception of different colors is influenced by color categories
