Cognition and Perception

The topic of the chapter is perception and cognition. The section covered the topics that I
was familiar with from the social psychology courses I took this year and the introduction to
psychology courses I took last year. I read the comparisons of Eastern and Western societies
on the basis of perception and cognition. In my mind, I associated different ways of thinking,
such as analytical and holistic, with individualism and collectivism. I thought that the fact
that people in Western societies have a more individual and analytical perspective can be
explained by individualism. And similarly, I thought that the fact that Eastern societies have a
more associative way of thinking can be explained by collectivism. And as with almost every
article I read, I personalized the situation. When I look at the country I live in, I think that
holistic thinking is the dominant way of thinking throughout the country, even though there
are many people with analytic thinking styles. Similarly, I can say that there is a collectivist
climate in general, especially in the eastern part of the country, although there are many
people who have a way of thinking suitable for individualism. For Ankara, the city I live in, I
can generalize that the young population has an individualist lifestyle and the elderly
population has a collectivist lifestyle. But I would like to emphasize that these are only rough
generalizations. Most of the people in my own family also have a collectivist lifestyle. On the
contrary, I can be called an individualist since childhood. This situation usually causes us to
have problems with my family in such matters. I believe this is partly related to intellectual
development. Let's come to the subject of a fundamental attribution error, which we talked
about for a long time in social psychology class. If we examine this issue again in the form of
Eastern and Western societies, individualist and collectivist societies, very similar thoughts
emerge as I mentioned above. If I were to personalize this, I can say that I do not make this
fundamental attribution error when I can think more rationally, but when I am emotionally
high, especially when I am angry or sad, I make this mistake very often like all other people.
The subjects of cognition and perception were examined in this book, not on a biological
basis, but on a cultural basis, unlike in our introduction to psychology books. Like all previous
chapters, this was a very enjoyable chapter to read.