asians and north americans see the world differently亚洲人和北美人看待世界的方式不同

Asians and North Americans really do see the world differently. Shown a photograph, North American students of European background paid more attention to the object in the foreground of a scene, while students from China spent more time studying the background and taking in the whole scene, according to University of Michigan researchers.

Nisbett believes that cultural differences lead to different views of the world

The key thing in Chinese culture is harmony, while in the West the key is finding ways to get things done, paying less attention to others. And that, he said, goes back to the ecology and economy of 2000 thousands of years ago.

Nisbett illustrated this with a test asking Japanese and Americans to look at pictures of underwater scenes and report what they saw.

In the latest test, the researchers tracked the eye movement of the Chinese and Americans as they looked at pictures. The Americans looked at the object in the foreground sooner.  The Chinese had more eye movement, especially on the background and back and forth between the main object and the background

Cave  commented :”These results are particularly striking because they show that these cultural differences extend to low level perceptual processes.They suggest that the way that we see and explore the world literally depends on where we come from."”

Cave said researchers in his lab have found differences in eye movement between Asians and Westerners in reading, based on differences in the styles of writing in each language.

asians and north americans see the world differently亚洲人和北美人看待世界的方式不同