Beyond Human Nature by Jesse J. Prinz

Author:Jesse J. Prinz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

THINKING HOLISTICALLY

Hunters and Farmers

One of the first to explore this proposal systematically was Herman Witkin, who argued that people from different cultures have different ‘cognitive styles’.2 Suppose you enter a room with slanted walls. You might mistakenly believe that the room is straight and you are standing at an angle; if so, you will adjust your posture. Alternatively, you might sense that the position of your body is perfectly straight and discern that the room must be slanted. Witkin used the term ‘field-dependent’ to describe the cognitive style of people who attribute the tilt to their posture. Such people process information in a way that is very sensitive to the surrounding context. Rather than ignoring the visual appearance of the room, they factor that in when they assess the position of their bodies. They use all the information available to compute an answer. Field-independent people process information differently. They decontextualize, or abstract away from context, to pinpoint and consider each bit of evidence independently. They can easily ignore the appearance of the room when assessing their posture. Witkin used other tests for distinguishing people who are field-dependent and field-independent. He developed something called the rod and frame test, in which subjects view a rod surrounded by a crooked frame. Their job is to adjust the rod so that it’s perpendicular to the ground. Field-dependent thinkers make a lot of errors on this test, because they find it hard to ignore the frame. Witkin also developed an embedded figure test, in which subjects are shown a complex shape with many overlapping lines, and they are asked to determine whether a simpler shape, such as a triangle, can be found in the complex shape. Again, field-dependent people make more errors, because they have difficulty decontextualizing.

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