Cultural and individual differences in rational thinking

Previous studies of cultural differences in cognitive style have generally found that European Canadians demonstrate greater fluency than many Asian groups in the cognitive styles practiced in the West. Recently, however, studies have suggested that although dialectical thinking is similarly promoted as an optimal way of thinking in both Eastern and Western cultures, Chinese people tend to demonstrate better performance on tasks involving dialectical information. Dialectical thinking is defined as the development of thought through the movement of thesis and antithesis to a synthesis of these contrasting positions. To date, cultural differences in preferences for dialectical information have been attributed to disparities in the basis and meaning of dialectical thinking in the East and the West. However, given that preferences for dialectical information were examined in these past studies, rather than actual reasoning performance, it remains unclear whether dialectical thinking is a more culture-specific or universal tendency. The purpose of the current study was to examine dialectical reasoning performance in a sample of 196 Chinese Canadians and European Canadians. Participants completed two tasks specially created to examine differences in dialectical reasoning, in addition to completing a reasoning task requiring dialectical thinking skills. To help elucidate the universal versus culture-specific aspects of dialectical thinking, the role of cognitive ability and thinking dispositions was examined. Variance in the role of cognitive ability and thinking dispositions in dialectical thinking across the groups would be suggestive of a culture-specific interpretation, while invariance in the contribution of these factors would be indicative of a more universal interpretation. Overall, findings revealed no differences between the cultural groups in dialectical reasoning ability. Consistent with this, cognitive ability and thinking dispositions were found to relate to task performance similarly for both groups. The current findings suggest that dialectical thinking skills may be more universal, while the tendency to display those skills may be more culture-specific. In light of limited cultural differences between the groups, despite the ethnic difference, further research involving less acculturated Chinese Canadians is needed to clarify the question of universality.