How Culture Molds Habits of Thought. Richard Nisbett’s work indicates that culture shapes not only the content of thought but manner of thinking — degree of tolerance for ambiguity, distribution of attention among foreground and context, linearity, categorization, induction vs. deduction, etc. While there is a long and venerable (although not mainstream) tradition of speculation that this is true, Nisbett’s work is apparently the first based on tighly-controlled empirical investigation. This New York Times article highlights one interesting implication —

When it came to interpreting events in the social world, the

Asians seemed similarly sensitive to context, and quicker

than the Americans to detect when people’s behavior was

determined by situational pressures.

Psychologists have long documented what they call the

fundamental attribution error, the tendency for people to

explain human behavior in terms of the traits of individual

actors, even when powerful situational forces are at work.

Told that a man has been instructed to give a speech

endorsing a particular presidential candidate, for example,

most people will still believe that the speaker believes what

he is saying.

Yet Asians, according to Dr. Nisbett and his colleagues, may

in some situations be less susceptible to such errors,

indicating that they do not describe a universal way of

thinking, but merely the way that Americans think.

Think, for example, about McCain’s endorsement of George W. last week at the convention.