Cultural Differences in Expectations of Change and Tolerance for Contradiction: A Decade of Empirical Research

Since the publication of Peng and Nisbett's seminal paper on dialectical thinking, a substantial amount of empirical research has replicated and expanded on the core finding that people differ in the degree to which they view the world as inherently contradictory and in constant flux. Dialectical thinkers (who are more often members of East Asian than Western cultures) show greater expectation of change in tasks related to explanation and...