Japan Intercultural Institute
Japan Intercultural Institute
Episode 19 - Why do we think differently?
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Does culture influence the way people think? Are cognitive processes the same everywhere in the world? In this episode, Yvonne Van der Pol and Joseph Shaules dive deep into the topic of culture and cognition. They discuss the groundbreaking research of Richard Nisbett, who argues that culture shapes our mental processes—and thus our experience of the world—in many ways. They talk about cows, chickens and grass . . . and the student who changed his professor’s understanding of mind by saying that for the Chinese the world is a circle whereas for an American it’s a straight line!