Nisbitt and Ross bring to life the field of judgment and decision making. It is a scholarly analysis of the subject. The book is essential reading for every pschologist, trial lawyer and any other person who must understand how people make judgments and decisions.

This is a landmark work in the field of social psychology, but it is also of great interest to a more general audience. The subject of the book is how humans think and make decisions. Since we all do this, and how well we do this has a considerable impact on our quality of life, this is one book that I believe should be part of everyone's education. The book is written for undergraduate students in social psychology so it is heavier reading than popular psychology books, but it is correspondingly more detailed and informative.

The culture of honor is a fascinating look at the role that cultural traditions can play in determining the incidence of homocide and other forms of violence. What I liked most about the book was the way Nisbett and Cohen used all the tools of social science, from survey and archival research to clever laboratory experiments to test their thesis. The way in which they "broke down" their data was particularly convincing. For instance they showed that where cultural influences were strongest(for example, in small towns rather than big cities)the North-South differences in homocide rates were greatest.While there were a lot of statistical tables and graphs, the book was easy and entertaining to read. I would especially recommend it for people who are interested in understanding about regional differences in American ideas about taking the law into your own hands, and for undergraduates who want to get a good look at the way social scientists can tackle complicated questions.

This book should be 'the bible' for everyone involved in knowledge management processes. Holland, as one of the complexity theory founders, decribes the essentials of how complex adaptive rules, in relation to the variability of the environment, determine knowledge dynamics and learning capabilities.

Key message of the book is the way that processes of induction, both cognitive and subcognitive, determine rule making, rule adaptation and environment modeling.

With this work Holland (et al.) was the first to close the gap between cognition, complex adaptive systems and knowledge processing. He also provides a sound computational base for the theories presented, opening possibilities for implementation of 'the induction theory' in real world applications.

This book is a wonderful introduction to the importance of situational influences on our inferences and decisions. The coverage of examples is thorough and it is easy to see how each is relevent to the topic at hand. Written in a an imminently understandable and conversational style, this book is a pleasure to read. I particularly enjoyed the ways in which the authors demonstrated the types of faulty logic we all use when trying to use dispositional information to make predictions about the behaviour of ourselves and others. This book points out quite clearly that just because an approach appears to work in the real world, doesn't mean that the rational for using it is reasonable. An enjoyable and informative read!

"The geography of thought" was written to demonstrate that there are fundamental cognitive differences between people brought up in "Western" and "Eastern" cultures. The book never distinguishes between fundamental cognitive abilities, which are presumably inborn thinking patterns, and culturally acquired styles of thinking. Nobody would argue against the proposition that how you are brought up and what you encounter in your culture affects how you approach problem solving and what you believe. By leaving the distinction unclear, Nisbett can make claims about cognitive processes and defend them with examples of cultural learning.

Nisbett appeals to cultural stereotypes and ignores contrary evidence. For example, he says,

"most Americans are confident that the following generalizations apply to pretty much everyone: Each individual has a set of characteristic, distinctive attributes. Moreover, people _want_ to be distinctive--different from other individuals in important ways."

I can see readers nodding in agreement at first, but then stopping and realizing that he could equally well and convincingly have written

"most Americans are confident that the following generalizations apply to pretty much everyone: Each individual often tries to conceal their characteristic, distinctive attributes. Moreover, people _do not want_ to be distinctive--different from other individuals in important ways. Many studies and our common experiences have shown that people strive to belong to groups. Teens have been known to commit suicide when they are not accepted into their peer group. The fad, current as I write, of body piercings with rings in noses, lips, tongues, and more intimate places is not the result of individuals having an inspiration some morning to be distinctive. It is an attempt to belong to and to exhibit belonging to a particular group. There is considerable disincentive to have a body piercing, there is pain and lingering discomfort; the rings can interfere with various activities and there are risks of infection and injury. In spite of all this, tens of thousands of people have submitted to piercings in order to signal a form of group solidarity."

Putting group association ahead of personal aggrandizement is not, as he claims, a marker more typical of "Eastern" than "Western" culture.

Another problem with this book is that it never reports quantitative results, not even giving the number of subjects in the experiments mentioned. Readers of daily newspapers can understand basic statistics, there is no excuse to omit them all. But we are given not so much as a footnote's worth of data to build some confidence in the results cited and in his interpretation of them.

Nisbett is also uncritical in his acceptance of Oriental lore. Here is one example: "Buildings in China.." he writes with evident approval, "are built only after an exhaustive survey by feng shui experts who examine every conceivable ecological, topological, climatologic, and geometric feature of landscape and proposed building simultaneously and in relation to one another." I think he meant "topographical" rather than "topological" and we note the impossibility of examining "every conceivable" attribute of anything. He seems not to know that when several feng shui experts are asked for their readings, without being informed that other experts have been consulted, it is often the case that their recommendations are wildly different, and even at odds with one another. One expert might say that red is the ideal color for the walls, the other might say that the one color that should not be used for them is red. Stage magicians Penn and Teller arranged such an experiment and videotaped it, the results are very funny, except to believers. Feng shui is, like psychic predictions and divining rods, demonstrably absurd.

I do not deny that being brought up in different cultures will lead to having different knowledge bases, assumptions, and methods of problem solving. And I agree that knowing about these differences is of value. But I do not trust this book's characterization of the differences in what seem more like pop psychology's shallow stereotypes rather than serious science. And the case for cognitive differences beyond those learned from the culture -- the main thesis of the book -- is not made at all.
-- from the reviewer's web site

I liked this book it was quite interesting in its approach to the differences in Eastern and Western thought. It's premiss is that Easterners' are more contextual and less object oriented in their thought processes. Nisbet shows how the West tends to value conflict of ideas over harmony and the east focuses on harmony and relationship.

Nisbet uses history, geography and traditions to explain his findings which are backed up by many interesting studies. I like the emphisis that these studies outline tendencies which peolpe can be trained to change or adopt to there advanatages.
Nissbet also is willing to critize both the east and west for certain errors that there thought patterns lead them to.

Nissbet also discusses how the source of how confontrations between the west and east occur due to differences. As well he discusses why the west and east have different view of human rights.

His most interesting arguement and most well founded is that Westernization is a commercial phenomenon and not necessarily a cultural one, Coke and Mc Donald's invasion of the world does not mean that eastern culture is disappearing or weakening only that the Big mac and Coke taste good to almost anyone.

I like Nissibet hope that western and eastern cultures will influnece each others way of thinking. And that understanding one anothers way of thinking is important. Through my travels around the world the attempt to understand others has lead to much more happiness than strife.

My new wife is Chinese and this book helped me to understand why some simple questions that I asked her are not so simple because we have a different starting point in the way we understand the world, this does not stop us from understanding the world together. I hope Nissbett is right for the world would be a better place.

This is a very insightful book with lots of information. It is well written and researched. There are many differences between the way Westerners and Easterners think. Some of the points may seem obvious, but they are still interesting to read about. Children who grow up in the East learn verbs faster. In contrast, children in the West pick up nouns faster. This is because Easterners learn the relationships between objects with action words first. Westerners generally just learn what the object is first. Conflict resolution is handled very differently too. The goal in Eastern conflict resolution is to reduce hostility and to reach a compromise. The goal in resolving conflict in the West is having satisfaction that justice was carried out with a clear winner and loser. However as the author suggests Westerners have to begun to embrace a lot of Eastern ideas. There is a greater emphasis in achieving harmony in a person's life in Eastern cultures. Asian people are more self critical of themselves as a result. In contrast, the goal of a Westerner is to achieve a sense of uniqueness and superiority. I also learned that students who study history in the West focus on the implications or outcomes of events first. Asian students study the causes of historical events first. Teacher training and evaluation is a process that never ends in Eastern countries unlike the West where it is short.

The Geography of Thought is a very short book, but it should not be read rapidly because of the depth and quantity of information. I have a greater insight and appreciation for the way people think now. I enjoyed it very much.