“Nobody can be perfectly happy until everybody is happy”
- Herbert Spencer
Except people from western cultures apparently. According to this study about facial expressions, westerners are much more self-centered. Just kidding.. But the psychological differences between east and west are intriguingly puzzling. And here I will collect good descriptions of the ways in which these two sides of the globe differ perceptually.
East and West Part Ways in Test of Facial Expressions – NYT
The study
Excerpts:
“How do you know how someone is feeling? For people in Western societies, it is usually easy: look at the person’s face.
But for people from Japan and other Eastern societies, a new study finds, it may be more complex — having to do not only with evaluating the other person’s face but also with gauging the mood of others who might be around.
The differences may speak to deeply ingrained cultural traits, the authors write, suggesting that Westerners may “see emotions as individual feelings, while Japanese see them as inseparable from the feelings of the group.”
- Eric Nagourney
NYT March 18, 2008
Newscientist – Westerners and Easterners see the world differently
Excerpts:
“Nisbett also cites language development in the cultures. “To Westerners it seems obvious that babies learn nouns more easily. But while this is the case in the West, studies show that Korean and Chinese children pick up verbs – which relate objects to each other – more easily.
“Americans break things down analytically, focusing on putting objects into categories and working out what rules they should obey,” he says.
By contrast, East Asians have a more holistic philosophy, looking at objects in relation to the whole.”
“Each picture showed a striking central image placed in a realistic background, such as a tiger in a jungle. They found that the American students spent longer looking at the central object, while the Chinese students’ eyes tended to dart around, taking in the context.”
“Nisbett and his colleagues believe that this distinctive pattern has developed because of the philosophies of these two cultures. “Harmony is a central idea in East Asian philosophy, and so there is more emphasis on how things relate to the whole,” says Nisbett. “In the West, by contrast, life is about achieving goals.”
“Nisbett hopes that his work will change the way the cultures view each other. “Understanding that there is a real difference in the way people think should form the basis of respect.”
- Zeeya Merali at Newscientist
August 22 2005
Excerpt from the Foreword to Wilhelm’s translation of the I Ching, by Carl Gustav Jung:
“The Chinese mind, as I see it at work in the I Ching, seems to be exclusively preoccupied with the chance aspect of events. What we call coincidence seems to be the chief concern of this peculiar mind, and what we worship as causality passes almost unnoticed. We must admit that there is something to be said for the immense importance of chance. An incalculable amount of human effort is directed to combating and restricting the nuisance or danger represented by chance. Theoretical considerations of cause and effect often look pale and dusty in comparison to the practical results of chance. It is all very well to say that the crystal of quartz is a hexagonal prism. The statement is quite true in so far as an ideal crystal is envisaged. But in nature one finds no two crystals exactly alike, although all are unmistakably hexagonal. The actual form, however, seems to appeal more to the Chinese sage than the ideal one. The jumble of natural laws constituting empirical reality holds more significance for him than a causal explanation of events that, moreover, must usually be separated from one another in order to be properly dealt with.”
” ”
- Joseph Campbell
Tags: america, culture, differences, east, facial expression, happiness, individuality, japan, psychology, west
Posted in Meditation, Philosophy, The Human Kingdom, The Universe | No Comments
