That's a pretty lame critique. It seems they're purposefully reading the wrong study, since there is another study that focuses on Chinese students and backs up Brooks' article.

http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=1995-...

http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/n/x/nxy906/COMPS/CLT/cul... (full text)

The critique is of how Brooks handles reporting facts in general. The joke I quoted is based on a specific example Brooks gave, which is traced to its original source (Brooks mentioned one of the authors, Nisbett - see http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=478).

I linked to the other page because it contains links to about a dozen other posts looking into Brooks' writing.

There might be other evidence supporting his general point, but then he should be citing that evidence, not twisting the facts or making things up.

Read the column. He's very obviously talking about multiple studies. The Nisbett study was about farm animals, not fish.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/opinion/12brooks.html

> When the psychologist Richard Nisbett showed Americans individual pictures of a chicken, a cow and hay and asked the subjects to pick out the two that go together, the Americans would usually pick out the chicken and the cow.

That one also appears in the llog posts if you follow the links: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=478

As far as I can tell, their critique is correct in that the research Brooks cites isn't enough to support the claims that he wants to make.

I meant that Nisbett's name was mentioned in the column (regarding the farm animals, yes), and that this allowed the study with underwater scenes to be found, namely http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11708567.

Besides other responses, language log is not a reliable source. I stopped reading when I got bored of the intentional misreading and mockery they use to position themselves as smarter than everyone.

I wouldn't be so sure about "purposefully": they are reading the same book (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=478, the book is https://books.google.ca/books?id=525HX623L_cC), but it seems on page 90 instead of 116. Brooks doesn't link to the study itself, not mentioning authors' names, so I think they made a guess about which study he meant.

I agree that that "other study" looks at Chinese rather than Japanese students, and it's high school + grad students rather than undergrads; but, still, let's compare what Brooks says with the reality.

Brooks: "If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim."

The study: (1) Not a real fish tank but short animated vignettes. (2) All the fish were the same size, so anything Brooks says about "the biggest fish" can't possibly apply. (3) The only "context within which the fish swim" was provided by the other fish. (4) The experimental subjects were not "asked to describe a fish tank". They were asked specific questions like "To what extent do the blue fish's movements seem influenced by the other fish?". (5) The differences were not about whether experimental subjects described one particular fish or the context in which the fish swim. (6) The differences found were far smaller than "Americans usually do X, Chinese people usually do Y".

Here's the biggest effect they found: they asked "To what extent do the blue fish's movements seem influenced by internal factors?" and took answers on a scale from 1 to 5: 1 = hardly at all, 2 = slightly, 3 = moderately, 4 = greatly, 5 = almost entirely. In one category of cartoons, which the experimenters term "compulsion", American high-schoolers gave an average answer of 3.17 and Chinese high-schoolers an average answer of 2.56. Second-biggest effect: same cartoons, but now asking "To what extent do the blue fish's movements seem influenced by the other fish?". American: 3.27. Chinese: 3.61.

These, I repeat, were much the largest effects found by the study among the several cases into which they subdivided their findings. For grad students looking at the same category of cartoons, the answers were 3.07 for the Americans and 3.00 for the Chinese (first question) and 3.77/3.82 (second question). Most of the differences they found were of this sort of size, and some of them were in the "wrong" direction.

If you think this study supports Brooks's statement about what happens when Chinese and American people look at fish tanks ... well, I really don't know what to say. It's not even addressing the right question to support (or refute) Brooks's statement, and in any case the results are far weaker than Brooks implies.

I don't know anything about this guy or what he advocates, but what was David Brooks message or point in his apparently mostly made-up comparison between American and Chinese students observation habits?

You can find his article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/opinion/12brooks.html

I'd summarize it something like this. "Americans are individualists and Chinese are collectivists. No one knows exactly why. Individualist nations have been more successful economically, but looking at China's recent success perhaps that will change. The idea of a harmonious collective might prove attractive, since our relationships are so central to our well-being."

... Except that he adds this snarky last line: "It's certainly a useful ideology for aspiring autocrats." Which seems like it ought to be accompanied by some sort of discussion of what he's afraid of, what might be done to stave off the danger, etc., etc., etc. -- but no, he just stops there.

I haven't read much of his writings, but recurring themes are "youth today" (e.g. people used to be more humble than they are today), or how western culture is doomed.

He seems to be very careless with how he handles the facts from studies he references.