Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers - often implicitly - assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these "standard subjects" are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species - frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior - hence, there are no obvious a priori grounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of human nature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges.

/pdf/the-weirdest-people-in-the-world-480wr4m3kb.pdf

The WEIRDest People in the World

https://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/BushLab/Site/Publications_files/Bush_2000_TICS_CingReview.pdf

Cognitive and emotional influences in anterior cingulate cortex

The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

Erik Eriksen is a remarkable individual. He has no college degrees yet is Professor of Human Development at Harvard University. He came to psychology via art, which explains why the reader will find him painting contexts and backgrounds rather than stating dull facts and concepts. He has been a training psychoanalyst for many years as well as a perceptive observer of cultural and social settings and their effect on growing up. This is not just a book on childhood. It is a panorama of our society. Anxiety in young children, apathy in American Indians, confusion in veterans of war, and arrogance in young Nazis are scrutinized under the psychoanalytic magnifying glass. The material is well written and devoid of technical jargon. The theme of the volume is that it is human to have a long childhood which will leave a lifelong residue of emotional immaturity in man. Primitive groups and

Childhood and Society.

/pdf/weird-languages-have-misled-us-too-comment-on-henrich-et-al-57dmcdjt24.pdf

WEIRD languages have misled us, too [Comment on Henrich et al.]

Experimental studies indicate that recognition of emotions, particularly negative emotions, decreases with age. However, there is no consensus at which age the decrease in emotion recognition begins, how selective this is to negative emotions, and whether this applies to both facial and vocal expression. In the current cross-sectional study, 607 participants ranging in age from 18 to 84 years (mean age 32.6 14.9 years) were asked to recognize emotions expressed either facially or vocally. In general, older participants were found to be less accurate at recognizing emotions, with the most distinctive age difference pertaining to a certain group of negative emotions. Both modalities revealed an age-related decline in the recognition of sadness and—to a lesser degree—anger, starting at about 30 years of age. Although age-related differences in the recognition of expression of emotion were not mediated by personality traits, 2 of the Big 5 traits, openness and conscientiousness, made an independent contribution to emotion-recognition performance. Implications of age-related differences in facial and vocal emotion expression and early onset of the selective decrease in emotion recognition are discussed in terms of previous findings and relevant theoretical models.

/pdf/age-related-differences-in-emotion-recognition-ability-a-5axh39oele.pdf

Age-related differences in emotion recognition ability: a cross-sectional study.

http://psych.ut.ee/~jyri/en/Paid2000_rses.pdf

The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale: its dimensionality, stability and personality correlates in Estonian

Observers saw 234 different pairs of stochastically organized dot patterns and indicated which of the two patterns appeared to be more numerous. All of the data can be accounted for by supposing that the choice of the more numerous pattern is based on the determination of the occupancy indices of both patterns. Each dot is posited to have an impact upon its neighborhood in a constant occupancy radiusR. The area of the stimulus plane occupied collectively by all dots provides a basis for judging relative numerosity; the pattern with the larger occupancy value is chosen as more numerous. The occupancy model, besides providing a general explanation of known numerosity illusions in strictly quantitative terms, can explain some puzzling aspects of numerosity perception.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/BF03205986.pdf

Occupancy model of perceived numerosity

http://www.psych.ut.ee/%7Ejyri/en/Pullmann&Allik_PAID2008.pdf

Relations of academic and general self-esteem to school achievement

The Estonian NEO-FFI was administered to 2650 Estonian adolescents (1420 girls and 1230 boys) aged from 12 to 18 years and attending 6th, 8th, 10th, or 12th grade at secondary schools all over Estonia. Although the mean levels of personality traits of Estonian adolescents were quite similar to the respective scores of Estonian adults, there was a developmental gap in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. Three of the five personality dispositions demonstrated a modest cross-sectional change in the mean level of the trait scores: the level of Openness increased and the levels of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness decreased between 12 and 18 years of age. Although the five-factor structure of personality was already recognizable in the sample of 12-year-old children, it demonstrated only an approximate congruence with the adult structure, suggesting that not all children of that age have developed abilities required for observing one’s own personality dispositions and for giving reliable self-reports on the basis of these observations. The self-reported personality trait structure matures and becomes sufficiently differentiated around age 14‐15 and grows to be practically indistinguishable from adult personality by the age of 16. Personality of adolescents becomes more differentiated with age: along with the growth of mental capacities the correlations among the personality traits and intelligence become smaller. Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

/pdf/personality-development-from-12-to-18-years-of-age-changes-26bvw2mw8j.pdf

Jüri Allik

Papers

Age-related differences in emotion recognition ability: a cross-sectional study.

The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale: its dimensionality, stability and personality correlates in Estonian

Occupancy model of perceived numerosity

Relations of academic and general self-esteem to school achievement

Personality development from 12 to 18 years of age: changes in mean levels and structure of traits: