http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_psychology

....One of the most significant themes in recent years has been cultural differences between East Asians and North Americans in attention (Masuda & Nisbett, 2001) perception (Kitayama, et al., 2003), cognition (Nisbett, et al. 2001) and social psychological phenomena such as the self (Markus & Kitayama, 1991)....

and let's not forget differences in peepee size. Very important!

lol

....for females or males?

Thanks for the post. Will read up more on it.

Lecturing at an Asian university there are some notable differences from Europe. The students are exceptionally gifted in all fields of natural science. A definite sense of self with an uncanny focus on the distant future.

How did you come to find-out this size difference?

Lecturing at an Asian university there are some notable differences from Europe. The students are exceptionally gifted in all fields of natural science. A definite sense of self with an uncanny focus on the distant future.
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Yes, I too teach quite a few students of Asian origin and too notice these perceptual modes and cognitive capacities. The whole university is quite ethnic and multi-cultural.

"....A definite sense of self with an uncanny focus on the distant future...."

This idea intrigues me, can you elaborate on this theory a little more?

"Lecturing at an Asian university there are some notable differences from Europe. The students are exceptionally gifted in all fields of natural science. A definite sense of self with an uncanny focus on the distant future."

Yes, I too teach quite a few students of Asian origin and too notice these perceptual modes and cognitive capacities. The whole university is quite ethnic and multi-cultural.

"....A definite sense of self with an uncanny focus on the distant future...."

This idea intrigues me, can you elaborate on this theory a little more?

Let me elaborate. Most of the Asian students I teach are keenly aware of who they are as individuals, what makes them tick, what their weaknesses are.
A sense of future -> I used to lecture in Europe for a few years and when I asked a simple question for example Where do you see yourself in 5 years? the answers would be pretty much the same with regard to career and family. When I ask Asian students the same question the answer includes EXACTLY how they are presently working towards this

Shouldn't you draw a distinction here between the different Asian nations(assuming already that you're talking about the far east)? The Fillipines, for example, are quite different culturally and economically speaking from the rest of their sorrounding neighbors, aren't they? I was fortunate enought to be dabbed with the Japanese culture a little bit throgh my ex-wife for sometime and let me tell you: Metropolitan Japanese kids now days have no clue about their future. At least not from the impressions I obtained as I studied the culture and the language. They are so immersed into the vougue of American culture to the point where they no longer live by many of the values that their parents and grandparents used to live by. It's like they've almost turned into an America a la Japan, or something like that. I would seriously doubt that most of present day Japan's youth have any assertion whatsoever about what their future, near or far, holds for them.

The most pervasive aspect of cultural psychology is via racial profiling, where racial and ethnic diffrences are relatively clear demarcation points in our breeding history (which is being mixed at a rapid rate). We all know that variation is higher within cultures than between, but that just means that polygenic trait variation is high in general within any human breeding stock. Generalizing mental traits towards any ethnicity or country is akin to stereotyping, but that does not mean it is at all untrue.

Sociology is popular for highlighting the individualistic vs. collectivist paradigm in cultural motivation, but developmental psych has shown that asian babies are more compliant than european babies (Freedman, 1974; Kuchner, 1980)...which hints that more than "culturally learned" is behind this. If cultural psychology's aim is to find stable and innate differences in behavior between cultures, than culture's influence may extend well beyond ontological experiences and skin color......

There is a hypothesis that language shapes cognition. Asian langeages are so vastly different from sanskrit and western languages.

on another note, i was born and raised and almost always lived in the chicago area and i am completely different than everyone here and really most people in general. i personally feel cuturally alienated on my own planet.

Sheesh. That's a crying shame, Tone. But I like your idea about language shaping cognition. I think that's very true.

What do you (all) think of this idea?

Eastern languages are ideographic, and Western languages are alphabetical (I stand to be corrected in some specific cases, I suspect). To the extent that Eastern languages represent their referents (the things the words designate) pictorially, Eastern languages' relationships with their referents is a closer one than those of Western languages (in which the degree of abstraction - though arguably massive in both cases - is perhaps greater). Alphabetical languages are more linear, where ideographic ones, at least at a single-'word' level, are more all-at-once (though read in straight lines). Perhaps the relationship between an alphabetical language and its referents (tangible things) is less direct than that between an ideographic one and its referents?

(Assuming, that is, that the referents of ideographic and alphabetical languages are, in essence, the same, which is also questionable!)

Tricky...

Yes, and no.

There is an argument for a pan-theistic (universal) need and ability to
communicate - which means that language is shaped by cognition - and not the
other way around. However, there are also studies (Semiotics) which show
that until a word is applied to a concept (a label), the concept is not in
human thought.

Have a look at this reference (Yes, the same source as the limerence study).

http://www.ulm.edu/~palmer/Ancient%20origins.pdf

"Living word," huh? Intriguing implications. Thanks for the link.