The Geography of Thought

The most influential thinker, in my life, has been the psychologist Richard Nisbett. He basically gave me my view of the world. -- Malcolm Gladwell [A] landmark book. The Geography of Thought shows that understanding of how individuals in eastern cultures think is not just nice, but necessary, if we wish to solve the problems we confront in the world today. We ignore the lessons of this book at our peril. -- Robert J. Sternberg, president of the American Psychological Association Westerners and Easterners see the world differently. Nisbett hopes that his work will change the way the cultures view each other. * New Scientist * Geography of Thought compares people from East Asia (Korea, China and Japan) with Westerners (from Europe, the British commonwealth and North America). Westerners typically see categories where Asians typically see relationships. Such differences in thinking can trip up business and political relationships * Wall Street Journal * A psychology professor dares to compare how Asians and Americans think. The upshot of Nisbett's research is that differences are real. They might not always be for the better, but they matter. * Forbes * The man whose ideas led to Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and to Nudge * The Times * Nisbett's results indicate fundamental differences in the ways Westerners and East Asians view the word. -- Kate Volpe, Association for Psychological Science The fascinating cultural reason why Westerners and East Asians have polar opposite understandings of truth * Business Insider * One of the world's leading thinkers * Daily Telegraph *

Richard E. Nisbett, Ph.D., has taught psychology at Yale University and the University of Michigan, where he is the Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished University Professor. He received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association, the William James Fellow Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 2002 became the first social psychologist elected to the National Academy of Sciences in a generation. The co-author of Culture of Honor and numerous other books and articles, he lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.