September 26, 2005 Source: University of Toronto:
http://newsrelease.uwaterloo.ca/news.php?id=4595 Daybook: U.S. expert gives lecture on Asian and Western thinking WATERLOO, Ont. -- How Asians and Westerners differ in their thinking is the topic of a special public lecture at the University of Waterloo today. The first annual Ziva Kunda Memorial Lecture, sponsored by the Psychology department, will be held at 4 p.m. in the MacKirdy Hall (Room 201) at St. Paul's United College on the UW campus. Parking is free of charge at college. A reception will follow the lecture. Prof. Richard Nisbett, University of Michigan, will give the inaugural lecture, named after a UW psychology professor who died last year. Topic: "The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently Š And Why." In a prepared statement, Nisbett says: "Westerners are inclined to be analytic in their approach to reasoning and perception. They focus on some central object or person, attend to its properties, categorize it, and apply rules to it, including the most formal of rules, namely logic. "East Asians are inclined to be holistic in their reasoning and perception. They focus more broadly on the field in which central objects are located, they attend to relationships and similarities among elements in the field, they are less concerned with categories and rules, and they rely on dialectical reasoning." Both social organization and nature of the physical environment likely contribute to these differences and to perceptual differences that complement the cognitive differences, he adds. Nisbett is the Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished University Professor at the U of Michigan. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has won the William James Fellow award from the American Psychological Association for Distinguished Scientific Achievements and the Donald T. Campbell Award from the Society of Personality and Social Psychology for Distinguished Research in Social Psychology. His most recent books include, Culture of Honor: The Culture of Violence in the South and The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently Š and Why. The Ziva Kunda Memorial Lecture is presented annually by the Psychology department to honour an outstanding scholar, friend and mentor who died in February 2004. Nisbett was Kunda's graduate research adviser at the U of Michigan. Contact:
Prof. Geoffrey Fong, Psychology, (519) 888-4567, ext. 3597; gfong@uwaterloo.ca
John Morris, UW Media Relations, (519) 888-4435; jmorris@uwaterloo.ca
Release no. 212 -- September 26, 2005
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