I am reading a book called the righteous mind by the moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, and in one of the chapters he discusses how the perception and thinking style of Westerners is different from that of Asians. Specifically, he says:
Westerners see the world as full of separate objects, rather than relationships. It has long been reported that Westerns have a more independent and autonomous concept of the self than do East Asians. For example, when asked to write twenty statements beginning with the words “I am …,” Americans are likely to list their own internal psychological characteristics (happy, outgoing, interested in jazz), whereas East Asians are more likely to list their roles and relationships (a son, a husband, an employee of Fujitsu).
Then Jonathan Haidt goes on by saying:
Related to this difference in perception is a difference in thinking style. Most people think holistically (seeing the whole context and the relationships among parts), but WEIRD people (Westerners) think more analytically (detaching the focal object from its context, assigning it to a category, and then assuming that what’s true about the category is true about the object). Putting this all together, it makes sense that WEIRD philosophers since Kant and Mill have mostly generated moral systems that are individualistic, rule-based, and universalist
Can someone explain clearly what he means in the last quotation by saying: "but WEIRD people (Westerners) think more analytically (detaching the focal object from its context, assigning it to a category, and then assuming that what’s true about the category is true about the object)."
