Dealing and playing the cards

I caught up with some reading over the weekend, including the New Scientist where this article had attracted my attention. In summary the article questions some of the common beliefs about differences between East and West. It argues that many result from social conditions rather than being intrinsic to ethnic origin and that overall the position is not clear cut which is no bad thing. I previously posted on this subject and suggested two reasons for differences. Firstly the different cognitive requirements of pictorial against non-pictorial language and secondly social conditioning. Having read the New Scientist article I don’t see any reasons to change that opinion. It seems we have another nurture/nature debate here. That appears to have been resolved, to wit nature deals the cards, but nurture plays them.

Critically it means that changing the environment and social interaction can literally change the way we think about the world which to me offers some hope.