living, thinking and writing
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Monday, August 22, 2005 old bottle, new wine An interesting research done by University of Michigan gives an empirical foothold for the old theory of high context / Low context culture. What's newly revealed in this study is that such differences may be natural born, which could be a quite a blow on the notion of "culture is learned". "Nisbett .... asking Japanese and Americans to look at pictures of underwater scenes and report what they saw. The Americans would go straight for the brightest or most rapidly moving object, he said, such as three trout swimming. The Japanese were more likely to say they saw a stream, the water was green, there were rocks on the bottom and then mention the fish. The Japanese gave 60 percent more information on the background and twice as much about the relationship between background and foreground objects as Americans." "the researchers tracked the eye movement of the Chinese and Americans as they looked at pictures. The Americans looked at the object in the foreground sooner Â? a leopard in the jungle for example Â? and they looked at it longer. The Chinese had more eye movement, especially on the background and back and forth between the main object and the background, he said." I met a biologist from UCLA not long ago and he predicted in our lunch that social science will eventually have to find answer in genetics. That's quite a bold statement. But if you read the recent bestseller Freakonomics, you might discover a newfound territory of eugenics in social science researchtolerantnt abortion policies correlates with the declination of crime rate (because potential criminals do not get chances to be born); who the parents are, rather than what parents do to the kids are highly correlated with the children's school performanceNumbersrs don't lie, that's what the Levitt, thauthorer believe. That reminds me that the whole regression theory starts with Galten's (he's Darwin's cousin) passion on eugenics. He was the one who stood at London street to measure the beauty of women passerby, and who set out to collect heights of hundreds father and sons. I guess social science does start with, or at least with intent to understand, genetics, and there might be a trend today that revives this dangerous tradition, which can be easily labeled as racism. posted by lmeimei @4:57 PM| permanent link| | |
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