Friday, November 25, 2005

Culture: cow, grass and chicken

At anecdote there was a great post about the chicken, cow and grass, an exercise from professor Nisbett. Apparently westerners tend to put the cow and the chicken together (they are both animals) and Asians put the cow with the grass or the chicken with the grass (cows and chickens eat grass). The explanation is that westerners are more obsessed with categorisation while Asians are more in tune to relationships. I put the cow with the grass, but that could be logical Dutch way of connecting I hope. I may try to do some tests with it with colleagues and in Ghana.

It reminds me of the exercise whereby you ask people to indicate with their hands how large they see the moon. Women tend to indicate a larger moon than men. (forgot the explanation of this phenomenon but try it!)

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