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Title: The Geography of Thought : How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why by Richard Nisbett ISBN: 0-7432-1646-6 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 03 March, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (18 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: It Helps To Combine The Best From the East and the West!
Comment: Only by reading the excerpt of this book has already convinced me to get a copy of this new book, and JUST READ IT!
As a person who got his formal education both from the East and the West, this book provides the bridge in connecting the "beauties" of both the Eastern and the Western styles of thinking.
To me, Western people are relatively more left-brain dominant (rational!), whereas Eastern people are relatively more right- brain dominent (intuitive!).
This book once again tries to prove the abovesaid contention, while providing sufficient MSA--Metaphors,Stories,and Anecdotes(historical, of course!) to back up its contention.
This book is very well written and can provide readers a lot of Aha and Haha experiences, understanding where the conflicts between the Eastern and the Western people really arise?
But there is one precaution here!
Don't over-generalize how the East and the West think differently. Some Eastern people got their education from the West could have tuned their thinking style into more Western style, or vice versa.
This book is a good starting point to shed light on how the East and West should respect each other and understand their cultural differences in terms of thinking and living.
I enjoyed reading this book very much....
Rating: 4
Summary: Very good
Comment: A very good book. Only marred slightly by politics.
On age 217 he writes that "The Bell Curve - Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life" claims that intelligence tests based on spatial ability indicate racial IQ differences. It doesn't.
The author also suggests that the future will see a blending of world views (eastern and western) and that this may involve "the best of both worlds." This is unlikely. The authors indicate that there are already societies that are "half western/ half eastern" in their psychology (like Hong Kong), and it seems most likely that blended world would simply consist of a half way house like this, not "the best of both" (e.g. think like an American when it comes to revolutionary science; think like an Asian when it comes to predicting human behaviour). The book makes it clear that these are total world views, with implications in cognitive focus across a very broad range of areas.
Interestingly, he writes that hunter/gatherer peoples think more like westerners (linear, analytic, reductionist, etc), while almost all agricultural people think like Asians (holistic, social, dialectic, etc). Draw a line from the fertile crescent (the starting point of agriculture) north west, terminating in the UK, and you get a gradual increase in individualist/ linear thinking. Might this reflect the settlement patterns of middle eastern farmers in thepaleolithic?
He also writes that their is no peer review in Japanese science, which might help explain the lack of Nobel Prize winners from that country. Criticism is seen as rude.
Excellent minus the PC.
Rating: 5
Summary: Great Explanatory Power for American doing Business in China
Comment: As a Chinese-American who was born and educated in the USA now negotiating multi-million dollar deals in China, as well as a 20 year observer and 'student' on the question of 'why Westerns find it so difficult dealing with the Chinese', I found this book to be valuable in providing the answers and frameworks for understanding my Chinese counterparts.
When the Chinese government unilaterally reset the terms and thus the investment returns for foreign investors in China's new telecom poster child, China Netcom (and that was after they invested!), as a Westerner you may incredulously ask, how could the Chinese think they could do that? Don't they have respect for a contract or an agreement? Don't they realize the repercussions?
Or you may ask why didn't the word 'freedom' have an equivalent in the Chinese language until recent history?
After reading this book you should have a much clearer understanding of these and many other otherwise puzzling findings and encounters with the Chinese.
I've read many books and articles of practicing and academic China experts - Harvard Professors & consultants, Asian Studies political scientists and historians, McKinsey consultants, corporate laywers, accountants with the Big4 firms, etc. - and they all have various theories that have good explanatory and predictive capabilities; however, I have found some of Nisbett's postulations to provide a better and more encompassing level of explanatory power. In fact, it seems his ideas give me a single, more flexible tool to apply to my business and daily life than the box of application specific tools I have gathered from my other readings. It gives me the confidence (I hope it's not false confidence though!) that I can deal with the Chinese better.
I have been constantly on the look-out for solid fact-based theories to complement my in-the-trenches experiences, and while my 'studying' of the practices of the often frustrating Chinese ways of business is far from complete, I believe I have found a very good tool to help in this endeavor.
Sure there may be some weakneses in the book's underlying scientific approach as other Amazon reviewers have noted, but if you are a business person looking for practical frameworks underpinned by very interesting research experiments, this book delivers. Even if the methodology and thesis are wrong as others claim, the findings seem to fill gaps in my understanding of how the Chinese think and behave.
Hopefully Nisbett and other researchers will extend his work into the business world. I'll be awaiting his next book.
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Title: Strangers to Ourselves : Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious by Timothy D. Wilson ISBN: 0674009363 Publisher: Belknap Pr Pub. Date: 30 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Intuition: Its Powers and Perils by David G. Myers ISBN: 0300095317 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Why Do Men Barbecue? : Recipes for Cultural Psychology by Richard A. Shweder ISBN: 067401135X Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: The Handbook of Culture & Psychology by David Ricky Matsumoto ISBN: 0195131819 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: September, 2001 List Price(USD): $29.50 |
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Title: Race in the Making: Cognition, Culture, and the Child's Construction of Human Kinds (Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change) by Lawrence A. Hirschfeld ISBN: 0262581728 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 31 July, 1998 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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