Multi-site study finds no clear proof that “Western” respondents favor analytic thinking while “Eastern” respondents favor holistic thinking

21 Jul 2026

It is widely accepted that culture affects psychology. Examples of this are certain beliefs about social relations, or when the language that you speak forces you to think of gender (example, Spanish) or not (example, Tagalog). An influential idea put forward by Richard Nisbett in a book titled “The Geography of Thought” argues that people in “Western” countries tend to think in ways that focus on individual elements rather than wholes, while people in “East Asian” cultures display the opposite tendency and find it more natural to think of things as belonging in a context. In other words, holistic thinkers process information as a whole, whereas analytical thinkers focus on the separate parts. Although intuitive and partially supported by some experiments comparing “Western” and “Eastern” samples, there is a need for a more careful test of this hypothesis.

In our study of almost a thousand people across 11 countries, including the Philippines, we were surprised to find that there seemed to be no evidence for a clear “East-West” divide on tests of “analytic” vs. “holistic” thinking. The study used simple, performance-based measures grounded in global–local and holistic–analytic frameworks that stem from Gestalt psychology, which introduced key rules of visual organization like proximity, similarity, and closure. These tests often ask people either to spot an individual shape or character within a pattern (“analytic”) or to quickly recognize a larger pattern made up of many individual parts (“holistic”). At least for our data, the performance of people did not correspond to whether they would be more “Western” (such as European countries) or “Eastern” (such as Taiwan). Indeed, the performance of the Filipino sample very much resembled the pattern of the Slovakian sample (a country in Central Europe). These unexpected results should prompt further investigations into the connections between culture and thinking.

There is a long-standing hypothesis articulated by Richard Nisbett, among others, that broadly speaking “Western” cultures would differ from “East Asian” cultures in basic cognitive tendencies. It is further implied that these cognitive differences are part of what explains other social and psychological differences between the geographical blocs. In contrast, our multi-site study did not support the expectation that “Western” respondents would clearly display a preference for thinking “analytically” and that “Eastern” respondents would prefer to think “holistically”. This is an important result since it encourages the field to revisit some assumptions about culture and cognition.

Authors:

David Lacko (Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences | Interdisciplinary Research Team on Internet and Society, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University | Department of Information and Library Studies, Faculty of Arts, Laboratory for Information and Cognitive Sciences, Masaryk University), Jiří Čeněk (Interdisciplinary Research Team on Internet and Society, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University | Department of Information and Library Studies, Faculty of Arts, Laboratory for Information and Cognitive Sciences, Masaryk University | Department of Social Studies, Faculty of Regional Development and International Studies, Mendel University), Alaattin Arıkan (Department of Social Studies Education, Faculty of Education, Aydın Adnan Menderes University), Thomas Dresler (Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Tübingen Center for Mental Health, University Hospital Tübingen | Learning, Educational Achievement, and Life Course Development Graduate School and Research Network, University of Tübingen | German Center for Mental Health, Tübingen), Adrianne John Galang (Department of Psychology, College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of the Philippines Diliman), Zdeněk Stachoň (Department of Information and Library Studies, Faculty of Arts, Laboratory for Information and Cognitive Sciences, Masaryk University), Alžběta Šašinková (Department of Information and Library Studies, Faculty of Arts, Laboratory for Information and Cognitive Sciences, Masaryk University), Jie-Li Tsai (Department of Psychology, Centre for the Mind, Brain and Learning, Laboratory of Eye-Movements and Reading, National Chengchi University), Tomáš Prošek (Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences), Pavel Ugwitz (Department of Information and Library Studies, Faculty of Arts, Laboratory for Information and Cognitive Sciences, Masaryk University), and Čeněk Šašinka (Department of Information and Library Studies, Faculty of Arts, Laboratory for Information and Cognitive Sciences, Masaryk University)

Read the full paper: https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001685

Multi-site study finds no clear proof that “Western” respondents favor analytic thinking while “Eastern” respondents favor holistic thinking

It is widely accepted that culture affects psychology. Examples of this are certain beliefs about social relations, or when the language that you speak forces you to think of gender (example, Spanish) or not (example, Tagalog). An influential idea put forward by Richard Nisbett in a book titled “The Geography of Thought” argues that people in “Western” countries tend to think in ways that focus on individual elements rather than wholes, while people in “East Asian” cultures display the opposite tendency and find it more natural to think of things as belonging in a context. In other words, holistic thinkers process information as a whole, whereas analytical thinkers focus on the separate parts. Although intuitive and partially supported by some experiments comparing “Western” and “Eastern” samples, there is a need for a more careful test of this hypothesis.

In our study of almost a thousand people across 11 countries, including the Philippines, we were surprised to find that there seemed to be no evidence for a clear “East-West” divide on tests of “analytic” vs. “holistic” thinking. The study used simple, performance-based measures grounded in global–local and holistic–analytic frameworks that stem from Gestalt psychology, which introduced key rules of visual organization like proximity, similarity, and closure. These tests often ask people either to spot an individual shape or character within a pattern (“analytic”) or to quickly recognize a larger pattern made up of many individual parts (“holistic”). At least for our data, the performance of people did not correspond to whether they would be more “Western” (such as European countries) or “Eastern” (such as Taiwan). Indeed, the performance of the Filipino sample very much resembled the pattern of the Slovakian sample (a country in Central Europe). These unexpected results should prompt further investigations into the connections between culture and thinking.

There is a long-standing hypothesis articulated by Richard Nisbett, among others, that broadly speaking “Western” cultures would differ from “East Asian” cultures in basic cognitive tendencies. It is further implied that these cognitive differences are part of what explains other social and psychological differences between the geographical blocs. In contrast, our multi-site study did not support the expectation that “Western” respondents would clearly display a preference for thinking “analytically” and that “Eastern” respondents would prefer to think “holistically”. This is an important result since it encourages the field to revisit some assumptions about culture and cognition.

Authors:

David Lacko (Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences | Interdisciplinary Research Team on Internet and Society, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University | Department of Information and Library Studies, Faculty of Arts, Laboratory for Information and Cognitive Sciences, Masaryk University), Jiří Čeněk (Interdisciplinary Research Team on Internet and Society, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University | Department of Information and Library Studies, Faculty of Arts, Laboratory for Information and Cognitive Sciences, Masaryk University | Department of Social Studies, Faculty of Regional Development and International Studies, Mendel University), Alaattin Arıkan (Department of Social Studies Education, Faculty of Education, Aydın Adnan Menderes University), Thomas Dresler (Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Tübingen Center for Mental Health, University Hospital Tübingen | Learning, Educational Achievement, and Life Course Development Graduate School and Research Network, University of Tübingen | German Center for Mental Health, Tübingen), Adrianne John Galang (Department of Psychology, College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of the Philippines Diliman), Zdeněk Stachoň (Department of Information and Library Studies, Faculty of Arts, Laboratory for Information and Cognitive Sciences, Masaryk University), Alžběta Šašinková (Department of Information and Library Studies, Faculty of Arts, Laboratory for Information and Cognitive Sciences, Masaryk University), Jie-Li Tsai (Department of Psychology, Centre for the Mind, Brain and Learning, Laboratory of Eye-Movements and Reading, National Chengchi University), Tomáš Prošek (Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences), Pavel Ugwitz (Department of Information and Library Studies, Faculty of Arts, Laboratory for Information and Cognitive Sciences, Masaryk University), and Čeněk Šašinka (Department of Information and Library Studies, Faculty of Arts, Laboratory for Information and Cognitive Sciences, Masaryk University)

Read the full paper: https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001685