The differences between East and West: more than just geography
A study out of UMich suggests that there is more than physical appearance and geography separating those raised in Chinese culture vs. those raised in Western culture. Researchers showed a series of pictures to two samples: one group of Chinese students and one group of American students. The findings suggest that the group of students from China viewed things more holistically, whereas the American students gravitated towards the main subject of the image:
Researchers compared the way 26 Chinese and 25 US students viewed photographs of animals or inanimate objects set against complex backgrounds.
Westerners’ eyes tended to focus on the main subject while the eyes of their Eastern counterparts kept flicking to background details, they said.
[...]
Its findings appear consistent with previous research which has suggested Eastern people think in a more holistic way than Westerners, instinctively paying greater heed to context.
This suggests that western students are more analytical. Specifically, Americans took in the background in just under half a second, and then focused on the main subject. The Chinese students, however, continued casting glances at the background. Researchers further observed that changing the background had little effect on the western students’ ability to recall the foreground image, which was not the case for the Chinese students.
In their memory, the foreground object and its original background appeared to be bound together.
The researchers, led by Dr Richard Nisbett, wrote: “The Americans’ propensity to fixate sooner and longer on the foregrounded objects suggests that they encoded more visual details of the objects than did the Chinese.
“If so, this could explain the Americans’ more accurate recognition of the objects even against a new background.”
The reasoning for this holistic view of things I can’t really offer any insight into because I am not familiar with eastern, specifically, Chinese culture, so I’m just going to quote the article. (Jacqui, if you feel like offering any insight, that would be nice. :) )
“East Asians live in relatively complex social networks with prescribed role relations. Attention to context is, therefore, important for effective functioning. In contrast, Westerners live in less constraining social worlds that stress independence and allow them to pay less attention to context. The present results provide a useful warning in a world were opportunities to meet people from other cultural backgrounds continue to increase.”
I think this holistic approach can be seen in all aspects of eastern media. For instance, anime tends to switch back and forth between two frames when a character is in motion, while altering the background to give the appearance of movement. American cartoons change the whole scene, but especially the main subject of the scene. Without getting into details, eastern pornogrraphy tends to be more… er… “holistic” as well.
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Ha ha! I feel so loved.
Anyway yeah, I guess the part you quoted sums it up pretty well actually.
Comment by Jacqui — August 24, 2005 @ 1:00 pm
[...] A few days ago, I wrote about the differences between Chinese and Western students and the way they perceive things. The Chinese students viewed images more holistically, and the American students viewed images as individual pieces. For a long time, so-called “eastern” medicine has been synonymous with “holistic healing.” This has included some practices of questionable benefit, but one of the overarching themes of eastern medicine has long to view the body as a whole, rather than a collection of pieces to be fixed individually. This also includes taking into account people’s lifestyles and habits, and perhaps making recommendations to alter them if necessary. [...]
Pingback by polyscience.org » Water cooler medicine — September 2, 2005 @ 11:21 pm