March 18, 2005
Culture
and Point of View
2005 Hastorf Lecture
Wednesday,
March 23, 4:00 pm
New York Room, Mary Woolley Hall
Mount Holyoke College
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Richard
E. Nisbett, Ph.D. |
East
Asia and the West have had different systems of thought – including
perception, assumptions about the nature of the world, and
thinking processes – for thousands of years. Ancient
Chinese philosophers and ordinary East Asians today share a
'holistic' orientation – perceiving and thinking about
objects in relation to their environments and reasoning dialectically,
trying to find the Middle Way between opposing propositions.
On the other hand, Ancient Greek philosophers were "analytic" – objects
and people are separated from their environment, categorized,
and reasoned about using logical rules – and the same
is true of ordinary Westerners today. Differences in thought
stem from differences in social practices, with the West being
individualistic and the East collectivistic. This lecture will
explore the relationship between culture and point of view.
Richard
E. Nisbett, Professor of Psychology since 1976, holds the position
of Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished University Professor at
the University of Michigan, where he also is Co-Director of
the Culture and Cognition Program. The author of more than
100 scientific articles and 11 books, he has received the Distinguished
Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological
Association, the William James Fellow Award of the American
Psychological Society, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His most
recent book, The Geography of Thought was described as “another
landmark book” by Yale University Professor of Psychology
and former American Psychology Association President, Robert
J. Sternberg. In 2002, Richard Nisbett became the first social
psychologist in a generation to be elected to the National
Academy of Sciences.
Free
and open to the public
Reception to follow
For more information call 413-538-2338
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