1)       Refined topic

Exploring perception differences between Chinese and Americans with relation to cultural differences

2)       Refined thesis statement

Cultural factors lead to the discrepancy in perceptions between Chinese and Americans.

3)       Keywords

Socialization, perception, attention, cultural differences

4) Map of rough outline

4)       Detailed outline in complete sentences

Introduction

-Significances: The research paper focuses on Americans and Chinese because they have the largest cultural gap. Although there are many reports on their perception differences and cultural differences, not many explore into their relations.

-Some examples of how they think and behave differently

-Purpose of writing on this topic: explore the relationship between culture and perceptions by comparing Chinese and Americans and hence facilitate cultural understanding.

 

Social backgrounds of Americans and Chinese

-Ancient Chinese’s way of thinking

-Religious backgrounds (Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity, Catholicity

-Social background (Chinese are socially interdependent; Americans are socially independent)

 

Perception differences and its relation to culture

-Chinese and Americans pay attention to different aspects. In another word of saying, they choose to absorb different kinds of values and information. This kind of perception is affected by culture

e.g. Chinese pay more attention to the field (holistic) and Americans to salient objects (analytic)

-Field dependence: experiments show that Chinese pay more attention to the field than Americans à differences in attention

-Perception of categorization: Chinese would classify stuff on the basis of relationships whereas Americans would classify on the basis of rule-based category è differences in views of relationships

-Application to daily life à experiment on perception of daily life à

*****Chinese are more concern of his/her of a part of society while American are more concern with individuality*****

Relation to culture: differences in social structure and practices lead to different point of view

 

Conclusion

-Restate findings

-Encourage cultural understandings and propose ways to minimize culture clashes

5)       Annotated bibliography with a summary of source evaluation for each source 

[1] How does the environment affect the person- Mark H. Bickhard

The research paper first explains some psychological theories like inter activism and encondingism. Then it explains how culture affects our psychological state from different angels like levels of knowing, selection of pressure, etc.

 

[2] Same Beginnings, Different Stories: A Comparison of American and Chinese Children's Narratives- Qi Wang & Michelle D. Leichtman

The research paper explores social, emotional, and cognitive characteristics of American and Chinese children's narratives. Through the experiment, the two authors explain how Chinese children and American children’s values differ. The experiment is conducted between American and Chinese children. They are asked to tell 11 stories and Content analyses were performed on children's stories and memories. Chinese children showed greater orientation toward social engagement, greater concern with moral correctness. Early socialization practices in these two cultures are discussed.

 

[3] Chinese seniors' perspectives on end-of-life decisions- Kerry W. Bowman, Peter A. Singer

The article explores Chinese senior’s value towards life and death. The 2 authors related the results with culture and compare it to western values. Religious values are also included.

 

[4] Culture and point of view- Richard E. Nisbett, Takahiko Masuda 

“East Asians and Westerners perceive the world and think about it in very different ways. Westerners are inclined to attend to some focal object, analyzing its attributes and categorizing it in an effort to find out what rules govern its behavior.” This is a typical difference between Chinese and Westerners’ way of thinking. The article explores these differences in niceties, like attention and perception, affordances of the environment, change and stability.

 

[5] Perception Differences between China and the United States--Analysis of the U.S. Perspective- WANG Fan　

This research paper introduces different political perceptions between the two races and there reasons, analyzing form the US perspective.

 

[6] Culture, Control and perception of relations in the environment – Li Jun Ji, Richard E. Nisbett, Kaiping Peng

Another research on perception differences between Westerners and Chinese, with the support of experiment. It is very similar to the paper “Culture and point of view”. Also discusses the relation between their differences and social factors.

 

[7] Culture and causal cognition - A Norenzayan, RE Nisbett

“The Western mentality is analytic, focusing attention on the object, categorizing it by reference to its attributes, and ascribing causality based on rules about it. The East Asian mentality is holistic, focusing attention on the field in which the object is located and ascribing causality by reference to the relationship between the object and the field.” Explains cognitive differences between American and Chinese with relation to their culture-specific mentalities.

       

[8] Culture and systems of thought: holistic versus analytic cognition - Nisbett RE, Peng K, Choi I, Norenzayan A.

Comparisons between holistic and analytic thinking; and explanations of cognitive process.

 

[9] Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, Emotion and motivation- Hazel Rose Markus, Shinobu Kitayama

Explains why people form different cultural background has different construal of the self; how we can dig out cultural factors from cognition, emotion and motivation.

資料搜集是做 research paper 最基礎的一步. 我一般習慣在網上搜集資料. 剛開始為这个 topic 做 research 時用 yahoo 居多, 但后來覺得 yahoo 的 search results 太广泛, 質素也參差不一, 很难找到合适的資料, 所以改用 google scholar 及北大图書館的數据庫。google 的資料很丰富, 用 advance scholar 非常方便, 还可以保証找到的資料是update 的. 我開始時通常會輸入很多 key words, 要擴大範圍時才把不重要的 key words 刪掉, 这样可以在最短的時間內找到最合心意的資料. 使用 general search 時我喜欢使用 " " 和 filetype: pdf, 因為一般論文都是採用 pdf 形式, 这样較易找到可靠的資料來源。

jstor 和其他 encyclopedia 的 advance search 其實也很方便, 建議大家做 rearch 時都使用 advance seach 去收窄笵圍。看完某一篇文章後旁边會有一個 more like this 的 button, 可以找到類似的資料。另外, 很多 encyclopedia 都有 mark item 的功能, 可以把有用的論文先記下來再慢慢整理, 十分方便。一般在數据庫的論文都比較可靠, 大部份 based on experiments, 而網上的資料會較多元化, 建議各位同學做 research 時同時使用 2 种途徑.

另外, 我曾經用中文在百度搜索關於我 topic 的資料, 效果也很不錯, 如果大家对于自己的 direction 尚未明確, 也不妨一試.

GOOD LUCK

Digital source 1

Search strategy: 

Keyword: culture envrioment, personality

Operators: filetype:pdf

databases or the search engine used: google

Bibliographical information:

Author name: Mark H. Bickhard

date of publication: unknown

title of the article: How does the environment affect the person

name of the journal: Children’s development in social contexts

name of the publisher/database: unknow

date of retrieval: 18^th April, 06

URL: www.lehigh.edu/~mhb0/EnvtoPerson.pdf

Source evaluation: 

Relevance: culture is a part of environment. So while explaining how environment affects the person, eg. Transmission of information, I can interpret how culture affects personality. But it’s a psychological journal so many specific terms are used, a bit too difficult I would say.

Authority: The author is Henry R. Luce Professor of Cognitive Robotics and the Philosophy of Knowledge; Director, Institute for Interactivist Studies; Editor New Ideas in Psychology; Departments and Programs of: Cognitive Science, Psychology, Philosophy, Biology, Counseling, and Computer Science, Lehigh University

Accuracy: a lot of references are stated, there are ( )s after some paragraphs to state references, examples are used and theories are quoted

Currency: unknow

Summary: The research paper first explains some psychological theories like inter activism and encondingism. Then it explains how culture affects our psychological state from different angels like levels of knowing, selection of pressure, etc.

Use of the source: The paper is quite difficult to understand. Only some parts are relevant to my topic. But since the author is a professional in this field, I can quote some of his opinions to support my thesis statement. Besides, some parts like social reality and social are useful in explaining how culture affects personality development.

 

Digital source 2

Search strategy: 

Keyword: differences, American and Chinese

Operators: from year 1990-2006, social science

databases or the search engine used: google advance scholar

Bibliographical information:

Author name: Qi Wang & Michelle D. Leichtman

date of publication: 2000

title of the article: Same Beginnings, Different Stories: A Comparison of American and Chinese Children's Narratives

name of the journal: Child development

name of the publisher/database: unknow

date of retrieval: 18^th April, 06

URL: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1467-8624.00231/abs/

Source evaluation: 

Relevance: It’s very much relevant. The research paper explores social, emotional, and cognitive characteristics of American and Chinese children's narratives. Through the experiment, the two authors explain how Chinese children and American children’s values differ. .

Authority: Qi Wang is from Cornell University and Leichtman is from Harvard University

Accuracy: a lot of references are stated. An experiment is conducted between 24 Americans and 26 Chinese, a lot of statistics.

Currency: 2000, quite upated

Summary:

 The experiment is conducted between American and Chinese children. They are asked to tell 11 stories and Content analyses were performed on children's stories and memories. Chinese children showed greater orientation toward social engagement, greater concern with moral correctness. Early socialization practices in these two cultures are discussed.

Use of the source:

The experiment can be used as an evidence to support my thesis statement. Besides, the research paper can also reflect differences between Chinese and American’s values, which is relevant to my research. I would explore the reasons behind these differences using some of the points mentioned in this article.

 Digital source 3

Search strategy: 

Keyword: Chinese, Americans, different values

Operators: from year 2000-2006, social science

databases or the search engine used: google advance scholar

Bibliographical information:

Author name: Kerry W. Bowman, Peter A. Singer

date of publication: Aug 2001

title of the article: Chinese seniors' perspectives on end-of-life decisions.

name of the journal: social science and medicine

name of the publisher/database: pergamon press

date of retrieval: 18^th April, 06

URL: http://www.utoronto.ca/jcb/about/publications/chinese_seniors.pdf

Source evaluation: 

Relevance: It’s also about how Chinese’ values differ. Elders are usually typical tradition Chinese so I can probably explore more about Chinese’ values. Besides, how they look at life is a very important part of “values”. Value is usually made up of religious value, moral value and life and death value.

Authority: Both authors are from University of Toronto and are now working in a hospital. The article is published by pergamon press

Accuracy: a lot of references are stated. Survey is conducted upon 40 Chinese seniors. There are information about the participants and also the process of collecting data. Also includes medical workers’ reactions.

Currency: 2001, quite up to date

Summary: The article explores Chinese senior’s value towards life and death. The 2 authors related the results with culture and compare it to western values. Religious values are also included.

Use of the source: The data can be another support of Chinese’s values. The part “approach to culture” is quite important since it discusses how culture affects their values. I can collect much useful information here. It can be an example so I could use the same approach to talk about how culture affects western values.

 

 Digital source 4

 Search strategy: 

Keyword: Chinese, Americans, cultural differences

Operators: advance search

databases or the search engine used: Jstor

Bibliographical information:

Author name: Richard E. Nisbett, Takahiko Masuda 

date of publication: 2003

title of the article: Culture and point of view

name of the journal:

name of the publisher/database: published online

date of retrieval: 19^th April, 06

URL: http://www.jstor.org/view/00278424/sp040018/04x1764v/0?currentResult=00278424%2bsp040018%2b04x1764v%2b1%2cFC01&searchUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jstor.org%2Fsearch%2FAdvancedResults%3Fhp%3D25%26si%3D1%26All%3Dcultural%2Bdifferences%26Exact%3Dchinese%2Band%2Bamericans%26One%3D%26None%3D%26sd%3D2000%26ed%3D%26jt%3D

Source evaluation: 

Relevance: I would like to explore how culture affects Chinese and Americans’ way of thinking. This research article talks about differences in their thinking in details so it will be very much useful.

Authority: Richard Nisbett, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and author; Nisbett is Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan, where he also is co-director of the Culture and Cognition Program.

Accuracy: a lot of references are stated, a lot of statistics, graphs and photos. They have done the research themsleves

Currency: 2003, quite update

Summary: “East Asians and Westerners perceive the world and think about it in very different ways. Westerners are inclined to attend to some focal object, analyzing its attributes and categorizing it in an effort to find out what rules govern its behavior.” This is a typical difference between Chinese and Westerners’ way of thinking. The article explores these differences in niceties, like attention and perception, affordances of the environment, change and stability.

Use of the source: I will evaluate Chinese and Americans’ differences in thinking based on this article. The statistics can be a support of the thesis statement. Since this paper is written by professors, I might as well quote form them. 

 

寻找题目开始时有点难, 但随着搜集的资料越来越多, 心中也渐渐对要做什么题目有了概念。刚开始我从自己学过的通选课和生活上面对的问题出发, 我上学期学的是跨文化交流学, 内容包括不同国家的人的不同生活习惯以及如何解决交流上的误解; 至于生活方面, 我觉得香港学生和大陆学生的性格及看法差异很大, 很想找出原因。本来打算以 culture clash 为题, 后来做了一点 research 后发现心理学有Psychological Anthropology 这一个分支, 讨论的是文流对人格形成的影响, 所以就决定从这个方向入手。

Interview 中老师的意见对我帮助很大, 因为Psychological Anthropology的范围很广, 文化可以从很多不同的角度影响人格发展~ 我打算在 further research 后集中在某一两个方面对这个题目加以讨论。

I had done a short interview with the teacher of 跨文化交流學, asked the following questions:

1. How does culture affects personality?

2. In what ways?

3. Is this topic do-able?

4. How should I start?

 

answers as follows:

1. 人的性格由教育和生活環境形成, 在一個怎樣的文化環境下長大, 就會形成怎樣的性格; 教育也是很重要的一步, 而教育程度上又受文化影響, 不同國家有不同的教學模式, 所以各國學生性格也有差異

2. 很多方面: 世界觀, 人生觀, 價值觀, 道德觀, 思想模式等等

3. yes, 但範圍很廣

4. 首先對文化和性格下定義, 看看2者怎樣互相影響, 可以從世界觀, 人生觀, 價值觀, 道德觀, 思想模式幾個方面分析文化怎樣影響人格

 

I have also sent an e-mail to the teacher of 心理學概論, waiting for reply~