He believes that this tendency to find the middle way has hampered Chinese efforts to seek scientific truth through aggressive argumentation, the classic Western method of identifying right and wrong answers. It may also have contributed to a Chinese willingness to tolerate dictators, said Peng. Dialectical thinking also has a Western version, which Americans often consider the highest, most sophisticated form of reasoning, said Peng. This type of reasoning allows people to proceed from thesis to antithesis to synthesis. In Chinese folk wisdom, by comparison, people do not attempt to work through the contradictions.
Human life is very much about contradictions.
You need more dialectical thinking to have a happy life. The American style, however, seeks right and wrong answers even where that is not appropriate, he said. For example, Peng found that American respondents become even more convinced of the rightness of their position after reading a counter argument. You make quick judgments and try to find the truth. Contradictory thinking is not acceptable.