This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The Culture Map" by Erin Meyer. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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What is analytical thinking? Which cultures tend to think analytically?
The analytical way of thinking focuses on the individual elements and de-emphasizes the surrounding circumstances. According to Erin Meyer, the author of The Culture Map, the analytical way of thinking is most prevalent in Western countries.
In this article, we’ll consider what analytical thinking means in a cultural context.
Defining Analytical Cultures
Many people interpret the phrase analytical thinking as thinking with an emphasis on structure, mathematics, or logic. But the key feature of the analytical way of thinking is the tendency to consider something individually, de-emphasizing its relationship with the environment. It’s not a tendency to view something through a more mathematical lens.
In business, this might be seen in how they evaluate risk. Researchers argue that analytical thinkers “typically expect states of the world to be stable.” This could be because they focus on the individual element. Furthermore, “when change is occurring, such as a stock growing in value, change is presumed to follow a linear trend”—to the point where Canadians sold falling stocks and bought rising stocks, but Chinese people (perhaps counterintuitively to the Western mind) bought falling stocks and sold rising stocks because they assumed the change wouldn’t continue.
Meyer states that a common criticism of analytical cultures is that they ignore the overall context too much. Critics think analytical thinkers can’t see the overarching influences on their thoughts or the potential broader impacts of their actions, so they must be incompetent. Critics might also just think they’re rushing and ignoring those influences.
Why Analytical Thinking Develops
Meyer argues that the analytical thinking of Western countries derives from elements of Western philosophy.
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- The eight axes you can use as a framework to analyze cultural differences
- How to better relate to those of another culture to accomplish business goals
- How the Vikings have more gender equality than we see today
