Research shows that Chinese's way of thinking is significantly different from that of Westerners, and different ways of thinking affect people's different ways of behaving. In the podcast program of "Humanistic Tsinghua Forum", Peng Kaiping, a professor in the Department of Psychology of Tsinghua University, started from cultural psychology to interpret the differences between Chinese and Western cultural thinking.
"The Difference in Thinking Between China and the United States from a Shooting Incident"
From 1989 to 1997, I was a Ph.D. student in psychology at the University of Michigan. The reason I started my research on cultural psychology was inspired by a sensational shooting at the time.
In 1991, a Chinese student studying at the University of Iowa in the United States shot and killed five people, then committed suicide by drinking bullets. This incident caused a great shock in American society.
I happen to know this international student from Beijing, who also pursued a roommate in my wife's dorm roommate when they were in love. I said to my wife with great emotion that if the two of them had succeeded in their relationship, maybe he would not have come to this point. Unexpectedly, when I talked about it with my American colleagues the next day, their reaction was unexpected. They said to me in unison: Really happy for your wife's roommate, if they are married, then it is likely that she will be killed.
I was wondering: Why do we think about this so differently?
Chinese believe that the environment, the people around them, including lovers and children, can change a person's behavior. But the Americans don't think it can be changed, no matter who he marries, whether he has children or not, he will kill people. This is actually a big cultural psychological difference.
This is called the attribution problem in psychology, which is to explain the causes of human behavior. It was from this event that I discovered the academic value and significance of studying the thinking of different cultures. That's why I started studying cultural psychology.
In the process of studying cultural psychology, we did six or seven experiments to verify the psychological differences between different cultures.
We did a questionnaire and asked Chinese students and American students some counterfactual reasoning questions. For example, if the international student is married, what is the probability of him killing people; if he is in China, what is the probability of him killing people; if he has children, what is the probability of him killing people? As a result, we found that Chinese generally believed that if he was married, he would most likely not kill people, because his wife would take care of him; if he had children, he would not kill people, because children would influence him. Therefore, Chinese are very good at finding causes from environmental factors and finding explanations for the problem.
However, Americans are different. When an American student answers these kinds of questions, the answer is almost the same — if he's in China, he kills people; if he has children, he kills children; if he has wives, he kills wives. They speak entirely of personal causes and do not look for causes from other sources.
And, interestingly, this difference has become more pronounced since the age of 12. In other words, most children under the age of 12 are attributed to individuals, and cultural differences are not obvious. As we get older, the cultural differences between China and the West are becoming more and more obvious. So we think that cultural differences in thinking are formed around the age of twelve or thirteen.
For a long time, Western psychologists believe that there is a so-called "attribution error" in the study of human behavior, that is, when explaining a person's behavior, it basically only looks at personal causes, not the impact of the environment. It's a deep-seated tendency, and that's what everyone does. But we have proved that this is really just the tendency of Westerners to think.
The value of this research also lies in the fact that it shows that different cultures have different logical thinking, and we can master the logical thinking of different cultures through learning in order to better adapt to the development of globalization. For example, when dealing with affairs, if you think that human behavior is mostly affected by the environment, then your focus is to change the environment and conditions; if you think that human behavior is mostly determined by individuals, then your focus is to change the individual.
"Let the world see the fish, will see what is different"
Another part of cultural psychology research is the use of cultural projection tests to conduct comparative studies of different cultures.
Previously, cross-cultural psychology research had a big problem, that is, it had to rely on language to express. As we all know, language is difficult to translate accurately, such as "red dust rolling", it is difficult to translate into English. Similarly, the meaning of many English words is translated and is very different from the original meaning. Doing psychological research on different cultures, translation is a big problem because we don't know whether cultural differences are real differences or differences caused by translations.
Later, we came up with a way that, without language or translation, could intuitively reflect human cultural differences. How? We designed a cultural projection quiz: we decided to let people all over the world come to see the fish.
Before we chose the picture of the fish for testing, we actually went through a detour. At first, we wanted to test it with some abstract geometry, but it turned out that people didn't like to look at it and thought that these geometric shapes were too boring. Then, we changed to the image of people to test, and found that people's looks and postures have cultural characteristics, Chinese the reaction of Chinese, and the reaction of Americans to see Chinese, which is completely different.
Later, we tried some animals and found that there were also cultural differences in animal preferences. One day, I suddenly remembered the phrase "Zi non fish, an zhi fish happy" in "Zhuangzi Autumn Water", so I decided to try it with the image of a fish. As a result, everyone loves fish, so we used the image of a carp to conduct a cultural projection test.
We made a three-dimensional image of the carp on the computer, and then invited people from different countries to see it and asked them to express their feelings. For example, there is a fish swimming in front of the picture, and the other fish swim closer together. We asked him, "Do you think this fish is happy or unhappy?" ”
A person's cultural values often determine his answer. If it's Chinese, most people will find the fish happy, "because we're all together, we're friends" and "we're all friendly." If it is American, many people will feel unhappy: "I am very good alone, what are they all here to do?" It's awkward. ”
To show people all over the world the fish is to project the test subject's own psychological state. This method later became a classic cultural projection test in American psychology textbooks called the Morris-Peng paradigm. Morris is my brother-in-law. Our groundbreaking research elevates and changes the likelihood of objective comparisons of cultures.
Prof. Peng Kaiping (Photo courtesy of the author)
"Modern Psychology Subverts stereotypes about Chinese"
In the early years, the Chinese scholar and translator Gu Hongming wrote "The Spirit of Chinese", and the well-known writer Lin Yutang wrote "My Country and My People", which mentioned many differences between Chinese and Western cultures.
The study of cultural differences from the perspective of modern psychology differs from their research. Because psychology is a science that emphasizes evidence and logic, except for individual cases, it is necessary to collect samples and analyze data to reach conclusions in order to have objectivity. We use a variety of scientific methods to collect data, including behavioral observation, psychometric measurement, etc., and after we have the data, we also need to perform statistical analysis. Therefore, cultural psychology does not start from the personal emotional experience, but uses the principle of big data to exclude personal feelings and random factors, and our conclusions are all drawn after rigorous scientific calculations, which are the results of scientific research.
Moreover, I believe that culture is a concept of change, and no matter how many observations and analyses have been made by the previous pioneers of thought, and how precise judgments have been made, in today's view, the differences between Chinese and Western cultures are also advancing with the times.
More than 100 years ago, an American missionary, Arthur Smith, came to China and lived in China for a long time. Based on his observation and experience of the daily behavior, life habits, and values of Chinese, he wrote a book called "The Character of Chinese". It puts forward 26 characteristics of Chinese, including saving face, frugality, hard work, politeness, disregard for time, disregard for precision, easy to misunderstand, twists and turns, obedience but not obedience, vague thoughts, unhurried, contempt for foreigners, and so on.
We used modern scientific methods to verify, and found that only 5 characteristics of modern Chinese are still maintained. For example, he said that Chinese is a frugal nation, so is it really frugal today that we Chinese? The study found that when there is no money Chinese is frugal, but after having money, Chinese is actually quite good at consumption.
Through the study of modern psychology, we have subverted many stereotypes about Chinese. For example, the tradition holds that Chinese are good at deductive thinking, and Westerners are good at inductive thinking, which is the difference between Chinese and Western ways of thinking. Chinese like to make inferences—we think that with a naturally correct truth, we can infer a lot of things; the Western way of thinking is different, it is through the discovery of many phenomena and then generalize. But in fact, this impression has been proved wrong by cultural psychology, Chinese is equally good at inductive thinking.
For example, we used to say that Chinese was cautious, but a careful analysis will show that Chinese boldness is actually very large. In the economic sphere, Chinese very adventurous. Think about it, scrambling investors, hot investors, passionate entrepreneurs... There are not a few hipsters in all walks of life, and all of them are evidence of the spirit of Chinese adventure. This spirit of adventure is not the same as the stereotypes inherent in Chinese. Therefore, our thinking should not stop at individual cases, old ideas. In fact, today's Chinese is already very progressive and very modern, and it is no longer the Chinese of the past.
"Respecting the Value of Every Culture"
So, what are the main differences in the way of thinking between China and the West?
First, Chinese emphasize holistic thinking, while Westerners emphasize analytical thinking. In layman's terms, it is easy to see a forest Chinese, and Westerners are easy to see trees. Chinese it is easier to see the whole, to see the whole, to see all the relevance and change, and it is easier for Westerners to see the unique personality of each tree, the distinctive characteristics, and even its exclusivity.
The famous philosopher Kant was aware of this cultural difference long ago, and he pointed out that there is a part of the thinking of the people who are comprehensive, and the thinking of the part of the people is analytical. That's his simple conclusion, but he doesn't explain why this difference in way of thinking arises. We have carried out a more detailed and comprehensive study of philosophical thought using the scientific method to reach the above conclusions.
Second, Chinese emphasize collectivism, and Westerners emphasize individualism. Relatively speaking, we Chinese pay more attention to relationships, families, and harmonious coexistence between people. Westerners emphasize personal expectations, personal goals, personal values, and personal definitions, that is, it is up to themselves to decide who they are. This is a big cultural difference.
Third, Chinese emphasize dialectics. Chinese is dialectical, what does this mean? That is to say, we Chinese a very comprehensive vision of the problem, we never only emphasize the characteristics of things themselves, we also emphasize the environment, emphasize change. We Chinese be sensitive to the fact that every thing has two aspects, positive and negative, and that it is only from its inherent contradictory movements, changes, and interconnections of various aspects that we can understand a thing systematically and completely in essence.
This dialectical idea is deeply ingrained. We call it naïve dialectics, which is different from Hegel's dialectics. Hegel's dialectic is to make continuous progress and constant change, which is a philosophy of struggle, a philosophy of change, a philosophy of continuous progress and continuous development. And the dialectic we Chinese is relatively inclusive thinking, two indispensable relationships, two aspects of righteousness, just as there is no day and no night, no long and no short. This is the wisdom of Chinese.
All cultural differences have their raison d'être, not that Eastern wisdom is superior to Western wisdom, nor that Western wisdom is superior to Eastern wisdom. In fact, they are the most meaningful and valuable cultures that people have created to adapt to their own living environment, so they have no right or wrong, nor are they superior. One side nurtures the other, and one mentality is suitable for the people and culture of a place.
Therefore, in any case, we must respect the cultural traditions of various places and respect the value of the existence of each culture. The study of intercultural psychology makes us aware of the charm and advantages of multiculturalism. At the same time, precisely because we have different meanings and values, we can learn its strengths from other cultures, so that we can produce greater wisdom, rather than sticking to one way of thinking or method.
After understanding the different ways of thinking, methodological strategies of various cultures, you will be able to skillfully use the most valuable methods. For example, when conducting scientific research, you can use the rational wisdom of the West to constantly innovate and break through the existing box. In the handling of life relationships, you can use the wisdom of the East to dialectical thinking, heart to heart, empathy, etc., to obtain a positive attitude. This ability to combine East and West can help you live happier and happier lives, which is the best application of multiculturalism.