Chapter 4 - Cross-Cultural Differences in Thinking: Some Thoughts on Psychological Paradigms

Abstract

Cross-cultural psychological differences in human thinking remain a controversial and challenging subject. Critics have rightly pointed out that most existing studies on thinking have been performed on biased samples (eg, the recent notion of WEIRD: Western, educated, industrialised, rich, and democratic, in Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010), and hence the universality of findings of such studies ought to be challenged. Yet, despite the many recent efforts in cross-cultural comparisons, two key questions remain underaddressed: are current methodologies in the psychology of thinking inherently biased toward explaining Western behavior? Or, to push even further, is the discipline of psychology itself such a product of Western culture that it limits its ability to uncover universal aspects of human thinking? This paper is a modest exploration of these two questions.