Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
DOI: 10.1177/0146167206298568
2007; 33; 691 originally published online Apr 17, 2007;
Pers Soc Psychol Bull Incheol Choi, Minkyung Koo and Jong An Choi
Individual Differences in Analytic Versus Holistic Thinking /cgi/content/abstract/33/5/691
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The authors constructed the Analysis-Holism Scale (AHS) to measure analytic versus holistic thinking ten-dency. In Study 1, using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, a 24-item scale was developed. In Study 2, convergent and discriminant validities were tested. In Studies 3 and 4, the known-group difference validity was examined by comparing scores on the AHS of Americans and Koreans (Study 3) and of Korean students of Oriental medicine and Korean students of non-Oriental medicine majors (Study 4). Results of Studies 3 and 4show that Koreans and Korean students of Oriental med-icine scored higher on the AHS than did Americans and Korean students of non-Oriental medicine majors, respec-tively.Studies 5 and 6 tested predictive validity by exam-ining associations of the AHS with performances on two cognitive tasks (categorization and causal reasoning).Data analysis shows that tho with high scores on the AHS displayed the holistic pattern of performances on each task more than did tho with low scores.
Keywords:
analytic-holistic thinking; culture; cognition
C
ultural psychology has been one of the most pro-ductive rearch areas in social psychology during t
he past few years (Tesr & Bau, 2002). Such a surge of cultural rearch has made it possible for students of social psychology to make an informed guess on what psychological differences exist between cultures, espe-cially between East Asian cultures and North American cultures (Fiske, Kitayama, Markus, & Nisbett, 1998;
This state of affairs marks a stark contrast to that of another major rearch paradigm in cultural psychol-ogy—individualism–collectivism. Rearch on individual-ism–collectivism has accumulated an enormous amount of information pertaining not only to between-culture but also to within-culture differences in social behavior. The literature on individualism and collectivism also pro-vides a fairly systematic list of both the antecedents and conquences of being individualistic versus collectivistic within a culture (for extensive reviews, e Oyrman, Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002; Triandis, 1995). One of the major vehicles that enabled rearchers on individual-ism–collectivism to accumulate such a large body of knowledge was the availability of convenient measure-ment tools. Although their psychometric properties and theoretical foundations are still debated among scholars (e.g., Oyrman et al., 2002; Schimmack, Oishi, & Diener, 2005), veral popular measures of individual-ism–collectivism have existed at both the nation level and the individual level since Hofstede (1980) devid the first one (e.g., Hui, 1988; Singelis, 1994; Triandis, 1996; Triandis et al., 1986; Triandis, M
cC usker, & Hui, 1990; Wager & Moch, 1986). Whether culture can or should be measured is still debatable, but few people would question that the measures of individualism–collectivism have helped spur the recent explosion of rearch on individualism–collectivism.
We now believe that the time is ripe for such a measure in the rearch program of analytic–holistic thinking, and the prent rearch modestly attempts to develop one. We would like to point out, however, that we do not assume that culture can be perfectly measured by a lf-report–type scale becau cultural frames include “some t of more subtle and implicit practices and social struc-tures that respondents cannot report becau the prac-tices are deeply woven into everyday life and are a normal part of living” (Oyrman et al., 2002, p. 7). Moreover, becau people are not always expected to be aware of how and why they think in the way they do (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977), we do not claim that the scale we have developed is an ideal or perfect measure of cultural think-ing style. Nevertheless, we believe that a scale of cultural thinking style will help stimulate within and between cul-ture rearch on thinking styles in the way that measures of individualism–collectivism have stimulated rearch on culture and lf-construal.
Analytic–Holistic Thinking
It is now widely accepted that East Asians hold a holis-tic assumption that every element in the world is some-how interconnected, whereas Westerners tend to view the univer as compod of independent objects (e.g., Munro, 1985; Nakamura, 1964/1985; Needham, 1962). Nisbett and his colleagues conducted a ries of experimental studies on various social and cognitive domains such as attention (Chua, Boland, & Nisbett, 2005; Hedden et al., 2000; Ji, Peng, & Nisbett, 2000; Masuda & Nisbett, 2001), attribution (C hoi & Nisbett, 1998; Morris & Peng, 1994), categorization (C hoi, Nisbett, & Smith, 1997; Ji & Nisbett, 2001; Norenzayan, Smith, Kim, & Nisbett, 2002), memory (Masuda & Nisbett, 2001), logi-cal reasoning (Norenzayan et al., 2002), and tolerance of contradiction (Peng & Nisbett, 1999) to compare East Asians and Westerners. Building on the theoretical accounts of other scholars and the empirical evidence they accumulated, Nisbett and his colleagues (2001) offered a theoretical model of analytic versus holistic thinking. We extracted the following four constructs as the key charac-teristics of the analytic–holistic style, which were incorpo-rated into the scale development.
Attention:Field Versus Parts
In the holistic style of East Asians, attention tends to be oriented toward the relationship between objects and the field to which tho objects belong. In contrast, the analytic style of Westerners tend
s to focus attention more on an object itlf rather than on the field to which it belongs (Hedden et al., 2000; Ji et al., 2000; Masuda & Nisbett, 2001). This apparent difference in the allocation of attention allows East Asians to e the “whole picture” with more ea than they would e individual parts, whereas the rever is the ca for Westerners. C onquently, East Asians are more field dependent than are Westerners (Witkin, Dyk, Faterson, Goodenough, & Karp, 1974) in that East Asians find it more difficult to parate an object from the field in which it is embedded than do Westerners. By the same logic, East Asians are generally better than Westerners in detecting the relations among objects in a back-ground field (Ji et al., 2000). Such a difference between the two cultures occurs even in eye movement (C hua et al., 2005).
Causality:Interactionism Versus Dispositionism In explaining causal relationships, East Asians assume the prence of complex causalities and focus more on the relationships and interactions between an actor and his or her surrounding situations than do their Western counterparts, who primarily consider the internal dispo-sitions of an actor. As a result, East Asians consider a greater amount of information than Westerners do before making a final attribution (C hoi, Dalal, Kim-Prieto, & Park, 2003) and are also less likely than Westerners to make the fundamental attribution error (Choi & Nisbett, 1998; C hoi, Nisbett, & Norenzayan, 1999; Lee, Hallahan, & Herzog, 1996; Miller, 1984; Morris, Nisbett, & Peng, 1995; Morris & Peng, 1994).
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Perception of Change:Cyclic Versus Linear Becau East Asians believe that elements are inter-connected with one another, they tend to view a phe-nomenon as nonstatic and expect that a state of constant change exists becau of the complex pattern of interac-tions among the elements. In contrast, Westerners per-ceive most objects as independent; thus, the esnce of an object does not dramatically change over time, nor is it affected by other factors. Conquently, when predicting future events, East Asians tend to posss a cyclical view that assumes constant fluctuations, whereas Westerners maintain a linear perspective that expects similar patterns of change or stability as have been displayed in the past (Ji, Nisbett, & Su, 2001; Peng & Nisbett, 1999). Contradiction:Naïve Dialecticism Versus
Formal Logic
When two contradictory opposites exist, East Asians tend to pursue a compromid middle ground. For example, when they argue about controversial issues, East Asians often try to reach a compromi bad on the assumption that both apparently opposite proposi-tions can be true at the same time and that one may be eventually transformed into its opposite. Such a deep-rooted yin–ya
ng approach by East Asians is referred to as naïve dialecticism (Peng & Nisbett, 1999) in which contradictions can be reconciled and even two opposite propositions can be simultaneously accepted as poten-tially correct. In contrast, the formal logic approach of Westerners directs them to resolve contradictions by choosing one of the two opposite propositions. As an illustration of such a difference, Chine students pre-ferred apparently contradictory arguments, whereas American students preferred noncontradictory argu-ments (Peng, 1997; Peng & Nisbett, 1999).
Overview of the Prent Rearch
Incorporating the four major concepts of analytic–holistic thinking, we developed the Analysis-Holism Scale (AHS) of 24 items in Study 1 and tested its convergent and discriminant validity in Study 2. We also examined in Studies 3 and 4 whether AHS could differentiate two eth-nic groups (Americans vs. Koreans) and two subgroups within a culture (students of Oriental medicine vs. students of other majors among Koreans) that previous rearch has demonstrated to be different in the dimension of the analytic–holistic thinking. Finally, Studies 5 and 6 examined its predictive validity in two cognitive tasks: cat-egorization task (Norenzayan et al., 2002) and judgment of causal relevance task (Choi et al., 2003).
STUDY 1:AHS DEVELOPMENT
Method
As indicated earlier, we cho four domains as the esntial constructs of the analytic–holistic thinking dimension: locus of attention (parts vs. whole), causal theory (dispositional vs. interactional), perception of change (linear vs. cyclic), and attitude toward contra-dictions (formal logic vs. naïve dialecticism). Our goal was to devi a scale so that individuals with high scores on the scale would give more attention to the whole (rather than parts), explain causal relationships in terms of the interaction between actors and surrounding envi-ronments (rather than bad on the disposition of actors), exhibit a cyclic (rather than linear) perception of future events, and prefer dialectical (rather than for-mal) logic in reconciling contradictory propositions.
We initially generated a list of 80 items that repre-nted each of the four domains but lected 40 as pre-liminary items after considering face validity, overlaps in meaning, and relevance to the literature. Some exam-ples are as follows.
•Current situations can change at any time.
•It is more important to find a point of compromi than to debate who is right/wrong, when one’s opinions con-
flict with other’s opinions.
•It is more important to pay attention to the entire con-text than to the small details.
•Any phenomenon entails a numerous number of con-quences, although some of them may not be known.
Each item was rated on a scale ranging from 1 to 7 (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). All items were ini-tially developed in Korean.
Results and Discussion
Exploratory factor analysis. A total of 303 students (147 from Seoul National University and 156 from Catholic University in Korea; 123 male, 177 female, 3 unidentified gender) participated in the study. They were recruited from introductory psychology cours and received cour credit for their participation. The mean age of participants was 22.80.
Exploratory factor analysis was conducted as part of the item-lection process. An initial inspection of eigen-values and the scree plot suggested a four-factor model. Hence, we performed a principal components factor analysis with a four-factor solution. A promax rotation method was ud becau
we assumed that the four fac-tors were conceptually interrelated rather than orthogo-nal. The items loading lower than .30, and loading high in more than one factor, were dropped. As a result, we
Choi et al. / INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN THINKING STYLE693
obtained 24 items, with 6 items reprenting each of the four constructs (Cronbach’s α= .74).1The final factor loadings of 24 items are listed in Table 1. The loadings of the items in each domain displayed the configuration as predicted.2The simple correlations among the four subscales of the AHS are prented in Table 2.
Though the reliability (.74) was not extremely high, it is considered high in general (Stangor, 1998). Moreover, the reliability of the AHS does not em to po a rious psychometric threat given the breadth of the concept it aims to measure. For example, the relia-bility of the well-known Self-C onstrual Scale (SC S; Singelis, 1994) typically ranges from only the high .60s to the mid-.70s (cited in Spencer-Rodgers, Boucher, Mori, Wang, & Peng, 2006).
Confirmatory factor analysis. One might argue that some items under “locus of attention” and “causality”are so cloly connected that attention directed to the whole rather than small parts induces a more complex causal perception leading people to take into account more distant caus
as well as proximal and direct ones. In this ca, the two factors can be integrated into one, and thus a three-factor model might be more suit-able than, or at least as suitable as, a four-factor model. Therefore, it ems necessary to compare the two models (three-factor vs. four-factor) in terms of fitness. Also, one might argue that there might exist two over-arching constructs, holism and dialecticism, such that holism includes “attention” and “causality” and dialecti-cism includes “perception of change” and “contradiction.”
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