9/23/14-Wu & Keysar 2007

Sorry this is so incredibly late!  Cultural Genogram took wayy longer than I thought it would.  grr...

The Effect of Culture on Perspective Taking

Abstract:

Perspective taking: Considering the mental states of others to understand their actions.  

Basically, people in collectivist cultures do better at being tuned in with other people and perspective taking as they interact with them than in cultures like the US which are much more independent. 

 Article:

Since actions are ambiguous, we are constantly perspective taking to see if we can figure out what others are thinking or intending.  Only at age 4 do children start to realize that other people have different thoughts and beliefs from them.  

INDEPENDENCE AND INTERDEPENDENCE

Collectivist countries tend to be more interdependent.  Their identity is defined by relationships with others.  Individualistic countries define themselves by their own achievements.  

When remembering events, Chinese people told it from a 3rd party perspective, while Americans told it from a 1st person.  We project emotions onto other people, Chinese project reactions to emotions to other people.  (?)

CULTURE AND PERSPECTIVE TAKING

There were two hypotheses--one claimed Chinese would be worse perspective takers, and one claimed they would be better.  (The first one didn't make logical sense to me, but whatever)  So this study is going to figure out which is right.  

So this was the experiment^^.  The left is the view the "subject" has, and the right is the view the "director" has.  The director will say "Move the block one slot up", and because the subject knows that the director can't see all the blocks he can see (because of the black squares blocking it from view), he should move the one that can be seen by both sides.  This was the test for whether you were taking in the other perspective or not.  

Americans got hung up on the blocks that their director couldn't see, which dramatically slowed down their rate of response.  The Chinese did much better at ignoring the hidden blocks and moving the correct ones.  So it turns out that the Chinese did better at perspective taking because they have been raised in a culture to take in other people's perspectives.