Hmm, should I let the Jap or Euro part of my brain reflect on this...? Here's how to design the experiments so that they're most informative: do something like the experiments in Chris' posts, but the subjects should represent four groups -- Asian genes in Asia, Asian genes in the US (or wherever else in the West), Euro genes in the US (or wherever), and Euro genes in Asia. Granted the last group will be hard to find, but at least try. Then do an ANOVA to see what has an effect on reasoning styles.

If genes have an effect, then reasoning styles are a deeply rooted trait. If culture has an effect, then reasoning styles are just shibboleths that cultures adopt to signal in-group status -- like clothing, hairstyles, particular language / slang, etc. Reasons you provide could be just the things you're supposed to say, as if you asked someone why Af-Ams tend to do more poorly in school than Asians.

Higher status Americans likely emphasize environment while lower status Americans likely emphasize nature when it comes to human nature (Inductivist looked at this), but this difference in "reasoning style" about causes of human nature and consequences of parenting practices is just a difference in fashion.

Also, if Hong Kong-ers really are that adept at switching, and could do it as seamlessly as switching from Cantonese to English, then the reasoning styles in question really are just group badges -- you couldn't switch back & forth from introvert to extravert or neurotic to emotionally stable that easily, nor from verbal-superior to spatial-superior in intelligence.

It's like when liberals profess one thing when in one audience (in public -- "diversity in high schools is great!"), yet profess another thing when talking to just their spouse (in private -- "let's send our kids to white schools!").

'Poor souls'? Don't you mean 'lucky bastards'?

I thought Nisbett said Asian-Americans are in between Westerners and Asians in terms of personality. Anywho, I wonder if more individualistic, less conformist Asians are more likely to migrate long distances (America, Hong Kong) away from the mainland, whose personality is then passed to their children. (sort of like the migration theory for IQ, smarter people are more likely to migrate long distances) I am suggesting that there may have been personality differences between Hong Kongers and Chinese mainlanders before the British arrived. Being half-Asian myself, I do notice that even Asian-Americans (even the ones born here)and Westerners noticably think and reason differentely, though not as extreme as Nisbetts East-West comparison. (not that any one way is superior to the other)

This is an old, old thesis -- probably a century old. People in philosophy, the arts, and free-lance religious studies have been involved with Asian philosophy for about a century and a half, and Chinese, Buddhist, and Hindu thinking have been leaking into Western culture for at least that long. Usually these ideas have been holistic than -- Asian analytic thinking is there, but it didn't really have a selling point since the west already was doing analytic thinking.

The causes been assumed to be cultural and institutional in recent decades, correctly I think.

My nominees for the causes are anti-traditionalism legal and economic individualism and atomistic science, primarily the former. Where decisions must be made by consensus (non-individualistic societies) in accordance to complex traditional bodies of custom, you don't really find yourself making a simple rational input-output cost-benefit decision very often.

In Taiwan students described a continuum as far as sharp business practice goes (sharp business practice is selfish, individualistic, and non-holistic) from Mainlanders to country Taiwan Chinese to Taipei Chinese to Hong Kong Chinese to Singapore Chinese.

From the point of view of business practice, Singapore is like New York. If you can make it there, you can make it any where. However, in terms of political participation, it's a very tightly managed oligarchic democracy. My guess is that Singapore Chinese would be more holistic than New Yorkers but less holistic than Hong Kong Chinese.

I think that in the less successful areas of the old Soviet Bloc you'd also find holism.

The Catholic and Lutheran ifluences in much of Europe, with their anti-individualism, work toward a degree of holism.

Agnostic seems to be thinking of "cultural" as being somehow superficial. Institutional differences such as the rule of law, the emancipation of young adults at 18, respect for private property, and hiring and promotion according to merit are cultural, and they're far from superficial. They really make freedom and individualism possible. In most societies individualist behavior is quickly extinguished.

There are fifth-generation assimilated Chinese families in California, and one guy I knew from that kind of family had zero Chinese traits, as far as I could tell.

The Irish are another example of a people whose traits changed entirely when they entered a new cultural/institutional environemnt. As an unsympathetic Brit said a few decades ago (no longer true) the Irish have been successful everywhere they went, but not in Ireland. It's impossible to exaggerate the contempt British and Yankees felt for the Irish in 1850 or so.

It's impossible to exaggerate the contempt British and Yankees felt for the Irish in 1850 or so.

For very good reason (at least in more moderated versions), to a much larger extent than is at all widely appreciated or even considered in this country these days. (No doubt I'll get howls.)

Read Luc Santi's "Low Life" about parts of New York City in the 19th and even early 20th century. Read Thomas Sowell's Trilogy on Culture (I think the main bits about the early days of the Irish in America are in "Immigrations and Culture".

The Irish are another example of a people whose traits changed entirely when they entered a new cultural/institutional environemnt.

Yes, but it took a long time for the transformation to be at all complete. Sowell reckons from 1850 until almost WWII or anyway at least WWI. Despite current myths to the contrary.

It's widely accepted as a truism that the widespread disdain of the Irish in America was the result of rank and irrational anti-Catholic prejudice on the part of the narrow minded nativist Protestants. Certainly there was some of that ab initio, and lots more after lots of contact. But Sowell points out that signs saying "Irish need not apply" rarely extended the exclusion to the Italians, their fellow Catholics. Yes the Mob was a problem, particularly in preying upon fellow Italians struggling with small businesses or later with union organizations in big cities, but Italian workers were thought characteristically hardworking and conscientious. The Irish on the job on the other hand were often slackers, prone to both getting into and instigating fights with other ethnics, not infrequently drunk and often absent. Of course I'm relaying Sowell's discussion of central tendencies not all individuals, and of course many individual Irish people who didn't share these characteristics at all obviously would have suffered from being judged as members of their group, especially while looking for work or better work.

Sowell's overall purpose in discussing how bad things were on average among the Irish for quite a while was in showing that although ethnic cultures usually don't change in big ways all that quickly, they can eventually change quite dramatically. He explictly holds out hope that black lower class culture could eventually change -- but not unless there's widespread understanding that it should for it's own good, particularly among black leaders themselves.

As Sowell also discusses, this changed markedly over time. Both the Irish on average within America and views towards them, so that now they're thought of as simply part of the white agglomeration. The Irish while remaining Catholic became heavily Americanized (which at the time primarily meant an American version of Anglicized) within America over time.

As for demonstration of what I've said above, read what Thomas Sowell presents. That's where I'm getting it. He marshals lots of heavily footnoted support.

To correct a bit of what I said about Sowell's argument re: the Irish transformation in America, he focuses on them not only as one of the groups who changed the most, but also as one that changed the slowest. As well he points out that while the Irish immigrants to America usually weren't at the very bottom of Irish society back home, they were pretty close, and usually came from the poorest and most culturally primitive (re: literacy, tribalism, etc.), western parts of the isle. Immigrants from better off (and historically more affected by outside influences) areas in eastern Ireland especially in or surrounding Dublin often did much better in America. For example the Kennedy clan. Many of the so called "lace curtain" Irish.

One thing I've thought is that poor, "salt of the earth", rooted, culturally-conservative local populations tend to do badly long-term. They develop static superstitious survival-cultures which keep people alive and poor. If someone says "my ancestors have been on this farm for 200 years", there's a chance that they're not very enterprising. Especially if it's a really crappy farm.

Poor whites, especially in the South, and African Americans are the main examples in the US, but I've read that French-Canadians in NE and Cajuns in LA fit that description, and in the SW Hispanics.

When Irish (or Polish peasants) came to the US they left the survival-culture and came to a different culture. The adjustment was long, as you said, but it was successful.

Oh I didn't mean "surface-only" as in of no larger importance, but I always hear these arguments in the context of psychology -- "reasoning," etc. (largely due to Nisbett). I'm just saying, if it turns out that it's Asian culture that's causing the pattern, and HK-ers can effortlessly switch, it's superficial as far as psychology, cognition, and so on are concerned. In this case, it would be a misnomer to call their activity "reasoning" since they're not reasoning at all but just saying what they're supposed to. Again, the way liberals & conservatives generally don't "reason" about anything, but just mouth their group's shibboleths.

OK -- what I'm saying is that HKers are able to switch between the behaviors appropriate to competitive individuals living under the rule of law, to low-ranking, disenfranchised persons dominated by the family elders and the colonial power. These are pretty major differences in behavior and, I've had people tell me, can stress people a lot.

HKers never have had full political rights, which Taiwanese do. On the other hand, Taiwan is a bit more old-fashioned, or was when I was there 20 years ago. (My experiences are out of date, definitely). Singaporans have partial political rights and live in what is probably the world's most technocratic, most capitalistic society.

"No Irish Need Apply" signs were a myth.

The "Know Nothing" movement was unsuccessful, but not at all insignificant. Educated people openly spoke of the Irish with an undisguised contempt which is hard to believe in the context of today.

Irish were brought to the US as cheap labor during a time when labor was needed, so entry-level employment discrimination was not one of their problems.

Did the Irish really change? Or were they just followed by other immigrants whose behavior seemed worse?

NuSapiens

Did the Irish really change?

Yes. A lot.

Does that mean there's no cultural continuity whatsoever?

No.