Given three words, e.g., panda, monkey, and banana, and asked to group two of them, American and Chinese/Taiwanese college students were more likely to group “panda and monkey are both animals,” while Chinese/Taiwanese were more likely to group “monkey is a banana Chinese and Taiwanese students were more likely to group “monkeys eat bananas”.
- Ji, L. J., Zhang, Z., & Nisbett, R. E. (2004). Is it culture or is it language? Examination of language effects in cross-cultural research on categorization. Journal of personality and social psychology, 87(1), 57.
There are two ways of thinking about how to group things, which is biased by region, and the person is unaware of the bias. It is good to recognize that there are two ways and to be able to consciously use both ways.
- The KJ method consciously makes the latter grouping. Instead of putting pandas and monkeys in the same group and putting a nameplate “animals,” it puts monkeys and bananas in the same group and puts a nameplate “monkeys eat bananas.
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