Rule-based and experience -based thinking: The cognitive consequences of intellectual traditions.

Abstract

This research examined the implications of divergent intellectual traditions in East Asia and the West for the cognitive processes underlying the thinking of contemporary East Asian, Asian American, and European American university students. In four cross-cultural experiments, a cognitive conflict was activated between rule-based and experience-based thinking. Consistent with documented historical differences in intellectual traditions, European Americans, more than Chinese and Koreans, set aside experiential knowledge in favor of rule-driven reasoning. Chinese and Koreans were more likely to rely on experience-based thought when it conflicted with rule-based thought. Reflecting their bicultural condition, Asian Americans' thinking tended to be intermediate between the two other cultural groups. These cultural differences emerged in category learning when a rule that defined the categories conflicted with exemplar similarity (Study 1), and in similarity judgments of categories when a rule conflicted with family resemblance structure (Study 2). Differences were also found in the persuasiveness of deductive categorical arguments, when set theoretic logic conflicted with category typicality (Study 3), and in deductive reasoning, when logical validity conflicted with the plausibility of the conclusion (Study 4). The implications of these cross-cultural findings are discussed for the role of categories in thought, culture-specific mentalities, and the cultural origins of science.