Gerhard Schaefer

Balanced Thinking: An Educational Perspective for 2000+ on the Basis of a Cross-cultural German / Japanese Study Gerhard Schaefer

This book, initiated by a comparative empirical study on ways of thinking in samples of German and Japanese students, picks up the old question of decision-making between contradicting needs. It analyses - stimulated by striking differences found in the way how the two populations treated the «contradiction problem» - the general problem of contradiction on the background of a «polarity approach» to life. On this background either/or decisions, although possibly scientifically correct and pushed forward under time pressure, may not be appropriate to the actual situation of life and thus be «wrong». Either/or, neither/nor, and even as-well-as reactions should be regarded as relevant in contradictory situations. This free option is called Balanced Thinking.