Globalization has brought Asia and the West in closer contact than ever before, but that fundamental difference in deep-rooted ways of perceiving the world is largely unchanged, the U.K.’s Financial Times reported Friday.

Westerners are accustomed to analytical thinking, and Asians see the world in more holistic terms, it said quoting prominent American psychologist Richard Nisbett. And while Westerners are more interested in the individual object, Asians attach importance to the big picture, to context and background. Using Chinese and U.S. student groups as his subjects, Nisbett’s team conducted an intriguing experiment. Each group was given a picture of an object within a background, such as a tiger in the forest, and minutely compared their eye moments. They found that the gaze of the American students focused intently on the object at the center, while the Chinese students spent much more time looking at the background.

The divergence of perspective in the two cultures is born out of differences in social and cultural backgrounds. Thus Easterners place great value on fitting into a construct as part of an intricate, interconnected web of societal relationships, and Asian parents, worried that their children will not be able to fit in, emphasize adjustment from an early age. By contrast, Westerners, who are relatively free from the pressures of a preconceived idea of what constitutes a society, stress the independence of the individual.

Even when they report crimes, English newspapers tend to bring the personal traits of criminals into focus while Chinese papers delve more deeply into context such as a criminal’s background and their relationships with others.

Nisbett, the author of “The Geography of Thought”, was quoted as saying that as contacts between East and West continue to grow, so does the possibility that they will create an entirely new perception of the world that will be of great benefit to both cultures.

(englishnews@chosun.com )