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Seeing the forest or the tree?

Posted by Stuart at 01:00 PM on August 26, 2005

What do you see in the picture to the left? (Click to see a bigger version.)

Perhaps one of the most interesting things about living in Thailand for me has been my struggle to understand Thai culture. Not only is it opposite in many ways to what I have been taught in Western culture, but it is deep and complex and fascinating in its own right. Now that I am starting to understand Thai culture a little better and know it a little better, I now want to learn how to talk about it intelligently and without offending anyone -- and the trick to that is being able to hold two opposite ideas in my head at the same time and be able to espouse both. (Because, after all, they are both valid views.)

Another part of the struggle for me is to not only be familiar with the theory (for example, Asians are more collective, Westerners are more individualistic), but to also be able to see how the theory is applied in real life, and to know, in any given situation, an Asian might choose Action X while a Westerner might choose Action Y. (Because now, I still always expect everyone to pick Y.)

Along these lines, I read very interesting article on Yahoo news a couple of days ago titled Asians, Americans Show Perceptual Divide about the difference in perception between Chinese and Americans. As the article starts:

Asians and North Americans really do see the world differently. Shown a photograph, North American students of European background paid more attention to the object in the foreground of a scene, while students from China spent more time studying the background and taking in the whole scene, according to University of Michigan researchers.

Why would this be true? One researcher said, "The key thing in Chinese culture is harmony, Nisbett said, while in the West the key is finding ways to get things done, paying less attention to others." This definitely ties back into my "lack of advocacy" complaint from yesterday...

In another experiment, Japanese and American subjects were shown an underwater scene. When asked to describe the scene, "The Americans would go straight for the brightest or most rapidly moving object, he said, such as three trout swimming. The Japanese were more likely to say they saw a stream, the water was green, there were rocks on the bottom and then mention the fish."

The article goes on to give a historical reason for the difference -- stretching back to the days of Aristolte and ancient China. Perhaps the most interesting paragraph is:

Aristotle, for example, focused on objects. A rock sank in water because it had the property of gravity, wood floated because it had the property of floating. He would not have mentioned the water. The Chinese, though, considered all actions related to the medium in which they occurred, so they understood tides and magnetism long before the West did.

A fascinating read, to be sure. What did you see in the picture?

(Trout pic taken from this page.)

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