University of Michigan.
Perspect Psychol Sci. 2017 Sep;12(5):782-790. doi: 10.1177/1745691617702718.
Cultural comparison has challenged people's assumptions of universality in psychology. It has also revealed that many questions and approaches in psychology are not culture-free, but reflect a distinctively Western analytic framework. In this framework, the world is assumed to operate by discernible and stable rules, contradiction is a problem to be resolved, and entities are viewed as relatively independent agents. Context and relationships between people and objects are relatively downplayed-or, when they are examined, are assumed to operate under parsimonious rules. Dialectical or holistic thinking, a framework more prevalent in East Asian societies, involves greater attention to context and relationships, assumptions of change rather than stasis, and acceptance of contradiction. Analytic thinking is useful for science and daily life. But sometimes dialectical thinking results in more accurate conclusions or pragmatically useful decisions than analytic thinking. Therefore, we propose that both dialectical and analytic thinking should be consciously adopted as tools in the "cognitive toolbox" of researchers and laypeople alike. In the present article, we review the cross-cultural work demonstrating the psychological differences that analytic versus dialectical thinking produce. We then consider the strengths of each type of thinking and how they may serve complementary functions for problem solving.
文化比较挑战了人们对心理学普遍性的假设。它还揭示了心理学中的许多问题和方法不是与文化无关的，而是反映了独特的西方分析框架。在这个框架中，世界被假设是按照可识别和稳定的规则运作的，矛盾是一个需要解决的问题，实体被视为相对独立的主体。人与物之间的语境和关系被相对淡化——或者，当它们被考察时，被假设是在简约的规则下运作的。辩证或整体思维，在东亚社会更为普遍，更注重语境和关系，假设变化而不是静止，接受矛盾。分析思维对科学和日常生活很有用。但有时辩证思维会比分析思维得出更准确的结论或更实用的决策。因此，我们提出，辩证思维和分析思维都应该被有意识地作为研究人员和非专业人士的“认知工具箱”中的工具来采用。在本文中，我们回顾了跨文化工作，这些工作证明了分析思维与辩证思维产生的心理差异。然后，我们考虑了每种思维方式的优势，以及它们如何为解决问题提供互补的功能。
