That Orientals and Westerners think in different ways is not mere prejudice. Many psychological studies conducted over the past two decades suggest Westerners have a more individualistic and abstract mental life than East Asians do. Several explanations are proposed to account for different ways of thinking. One explanation is that stepping into the modern social , economic and technological situation promotes individualism. However , in Japan , a pretty modern country , its people have retained a collective outlook. A second proposal is that if a place is liable to a higher frequency of infectious disease , it is more dangerous to make contact with strangers , which causes groups in this place to turn inward and tend to be collective. This explanation is also been questioned. Europe has had its share of plagues; probably more than either Japan or Korea. And though in southern China , a source of infection often starts there , this is not true of other parts of that enormous country. That led Thomas Talhelm of the University of Virginia and his colleagues to look into a third suggestion: that the crucial difference is agricultural. The West ’ s staple (主食) is wheat , while the East ’ s rice. Before the mechanical revolution of agriculture , a farmer who grew rice had to spend twice as many hours doing so as one who grew wheat. To promote efficient agricultural production , especially at times of planting and harvesting , rice-growing societies as far apart as India , Malaysia and Japan all developed cooperative labor exchanges. That is , neighbors arranged their farms ’ schedules one after another in order to assist each other during these significant periods. Since , until recently , almost everyone was a farmer , it is a reasonable proposal that such a collective outlook would enjoy a controlling position in a society ’ s culture and behavior , and might prove so deep rooted that even now , when most people earn their living in other ways , it helps to define their lives. This proposal that the different ways of thinking of East and West are , at least in part , a consequence of their agriculture is worth further exploration.