An interesting article from the AP:
"Asians live in more socially complicated world than we do," he said in a telephone interview. "They have to pay more attention to others than we do. We are individualists. We can be bulls in a china shop, they can't afford it."
The key thing in Chinese culture is harmony, Nisbett said, while in the West the key is finding ways to get things done, paying less attention to others.
In various ways, I've often felt like I'm grinding gears, caught somewhere in between two cultures, and it's nice to see some evidence that it's not all in my head.
Although I guess technically it is.
One might further take the researchers' basic stereotype of the typical American of European descent (the bull in a china shop, presumably with no pun intended) and extrapolate that to a bigger picture* where it might result in industrial-level environmental neglect and general corporate malfeasance, but we all know how believing stereotypes can be misleading. Right? And besides, we really don't want to go there, because well, things are kinda depressing enough as it is, y'know?
* I guess that's kind of what the article was talking about, huh?
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