Proverb preferences across cultures: Dialecticality or poeticality?

Friedman, Mike; Chen, Hsin-Chin; Vaid, Jyotsna

doi:10.3758/bf03193856

Cited by 21 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…And when Eastern (Japanese) participants have a direct stake in the contradiction (someone is stating a view point opposite their own), they behave exactly as Westerners (French) participants, favoring their own position (Mercier,Van der Henst,17 The first two experiments dealt with preferences for dialectical or non--dialectical proverbs. The difference that was observed in Peng & Nisbett (1999), however, seems to be the result of a confound, and has proven hard to replicate (Friedman, Chen, & Vaid, 2006). Yama, Kawasaki, & Adachi, submitted; Van der Henst, Mercier, Yama, Kawasaki, & Adachi, 2007).…”

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confidence: 99%

On the Universality of Argumentative Reasoning

Mercier

2011

J Cogn Cult

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According to the argumentative theory of reasoning, humans have evolved reasoning abilities (usually known as 'system 2' or 'analytic' reasoning) for argumentative purposes. This implies that some reasoning skills should be universals. Such a claim seems to be at odd with findings from cross-cultural research. First, a wealth of research, following the work of Luria, has shown apparent difficulties for illiterate populations to solve simple but abstract syllogisms. It can be shown, however, that once they are willing to accept the pragmatics of the task, these participants can perform at or near ceiling. Second, historical, sociological and anthropological research has been used to claim that some Eastern cultures have not developed argumentation. These claims are the result of oversimplifications and of a selective view of the data. A closer looks reveals instead very elaborate forms of argumentation, in Chinese culture particularly. Third, cross-cultural psychologists have carried out an extensive research program aimed at showing that Easterners do not rely on the principle of non-contradiction and that they use holistic rather than analytic thinking. A review of these experiments shows that no qualitative difference emerges in the way Easterners and Westerners deal with argumentation and that in the proper context both populations can easily have recourse to holistic or analytic thinking. It is possible to conclude from this critical review that the reasoning skills involved in argumentation seem to be universal even though they can be used in different ways in various cultural contexts. 2Abstract. According to the argumentative theory of reasoning, humans have evolved reasoning abilities (usually known as 'system 2' or 'analytic' reasoning) for argumentative purposes. This implies that some reasoning skills should be universals. Such a claim seems to be at odd with findings from cross--cultural research. First, a wealth of research, following the work of Luria, has shown apparent difficulties for illiterate populations to solve simple but abstract syllogisms. It can be shown however that once they are willing to accept the pragmatics of the task, these participants can perform at or near ceiling. Second, historical, sociological and anthropological research has been used to claim that some Eastern cultures have not developed argumentation. These claims are the result of oversimplifications and of a selective view of the data. A closer looks reveals instead very elaborate forms of argumentation, in Chinese culture particularly. Third, cross--cultural psychologists have carried out an extensive research program aimed at showing that Easterners do not rely on the principle of non--contradiction and that they use holistic rather than analytic thinking. A review of these experiments shows that no qualitative difference emerges in the way Easterners and Westerners deal with argumentation and that in the proper context both populations can easily have recourse to holistic or analytic thinking. It is possi...

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confidence: 99%

On the Universality of Argumentative Reasoning

Mercier

2011

J Cogn Cult

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“…In other words, compared to Westerners, Easterners have a stronger tendency to view the world as contradictory and, thus, interpret their thoughts as being composed of positive and negative aspects in their cultural practices. However, Friedman, Chen, andVaid, 2006 (2006) did not replicate Peng and Nisbett's (1999) results using contradictory proverbs. Both Chinese and Americans preferred dialectical proverbs to Running Head: CULTURE AND THINKING 13 non-dialectical ones and judged the dialectical type as wiser.…”

Section: This Distinction Has Been Discussed In Terms Of the Contrastmentioning

confidence: 71%

Explanations for cultural differences in thinking: Easterners’ dialectical thinking and Westerners’ linear thinking

Yama

Zakaria

2019

Journal of Cognitive Psychology

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Since Easterners' naïve dialectical thinking, which is contrasted with Westerners' linear thinking, introduced, many cross-cultural studies on human thinking have been conducted, and explanations for the cultural differences have been proposed. First, after examining the robustness of these cultural differences, two existing explanations are discussed in this paper. The first is based on the distinction between Westerners' analytic cognition and Easterners' holistic cognition. This is related to the distinction between Westerners' independent self and Easterners' interdependent self. The second is based on the philosophical tradition of China's Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, which is contrasted with that of Ancient Greece. Second, we propose a new explanation based on the distinction between Westerners' low-context culture and Easterners' high-context culture. Finally, we show that this distinction can be based on socioecological approaches, and it is expected to explain the cultural differences between the Chinese and Japanese.

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“…In their study, Friedman, Chen and Vaid (2006) tried to determine whether the finding by Peng and Nisbett (1999, Experiment 2) that Asians prefer dialectical over nondialectical proverbs more than Americans do was replicable. The results of their study indicated that it is not; the failure to replicate Peng and Nisbett's finding was all the more noteworthy given that their dialectical and nondialectical stimulus sets included the same items used in Peng and Nisbett's Experiment.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 96%

Contrastive discourse analysis of Persian and English animal proverbs

Rashidi¹,

Ghaedi²

2013

Babel

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IntroductionPeople of different cultures are provided with plenty of values or norms in the content of their language to establish an identity of their society, reveal life continuity, and transmit lessons of life to their following generations; therefore, they can strategically cope with the complexities of their sociocultural problems by means of these values and norms (Arimi 2005). Languages are manifestations of cultures and can serve as a vehicle to reveal the differences between cultures. Proverbs, as a part of every language and culture, carry the norms and values of cultures and reveal the wit and wisdom of their people. Though the use of proverbs may differ from one society to another what is common to proverbs everywhere is that they touch a wide range of human concerns and activities. Gorjian (2008:1) defines proverbs as popular expressions presenting "an idea of experience, knowledge, advice, morality, truth, virtue, genius, irony, etc." From ancient times up to now, proverbs have been used to spread knowledge, wisdom and truth about life of its users. They have been considered an important factor in fostering children, since they signal moral values and exhort common behavior. They belong to the traditional verbal folklore genres and the wisdom of proverbs has guided the people worldwide in social interaction throughout the ages. They are used with a certain communicative purpose that transcends their linguistic form and meaning. They reflect an implicit typology of patterns of reasoning. For this and other reasons, proverbs are interesting to study, since through them we can extract many ideas on how we think, how we conceptualize and categorize the world, and how we transmit traditional folk knowledge from generation to generation. Arimi (2005:91) states that discovery of proverbs determines the content of proverbs and their related contexts and discloses "generally prototypical associative-patterns of selected wisdom." According to Bussmann (1995, as cited in Arimi 2005:92), a prototype is "a model or proto-image of all representatives of the meaning of a category that builds a thought pattern of preparing or solving life Babel 59:1 (2013), 1-24. © Fédération des Traducteurs (FIT) Revue Babel DOI io.iO75/babel.59.i.oiras ISSN 0521-9744 E-ISSN 1569-9668Nasser Rashidi and Hadis Ghaedi problems". Proverbial prototypes relating to human life such as society or social life, economy, politics, law, sex, and etc, come to the people as norms or values in their life interaction. Every society or culture has its own way of understanding and implementing these norms or values.As Arimi (2005) noted, proverbial prototypes foUow the themes of the popular proverbs that are mostly relevant to contemporary trends of life, for instance, themes on society, politics, culture, and economy. According to him, the social prototype deal with working, timing, and charity, while the law has to do with the nature of truth, and the belief or religion relates to destiny and fate. The specific prototype of working in life tren...

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Proverb preferences across cultures: Dialecticality or poeticality?

Cited by 21 publications

References 15 publications

On the Universality of Argumentative Reasoning

On the Universality of Argumentative Reasoning

Explanations for cultural differences in thinking: Easterners’ dialectical thinking and Westerners’ linear thinking

Contrastive discourse analysis of Persian and English animal proverbs

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