Open AccessBook
The WEIRDest People in the World
Reads0
Chats0
TLDR
A 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.Abstract:
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.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Amazon's Mechanical Turk A New Source of Inexpensive, Yet High-Quality, Data?
TL;DR: Findings indicate that MTurk can be used to obtain high-quality data inexpensively and rapidly and the data obtained are at least as reliable as those obtained via traditional methods.
Journal ArticleDOI
Most people are not WEIRD
TL;DR: To understand human psychology, behavioural scientists must stop doing most of their experiments on Westerners, argue Joseph Henrich, Steven J. Heine and Ara Norenzayan.
Journal ArticleDOI
Separate but equal? A comparison of participants and data gathered via Amazon's MTurk, social media, and face-to-face behavioral testing
TL;DR: It is concluded that for some behavioral tests, online recruitment and testing can be a valid-and sometimes even superior-partner to in-person data collection.
Journal ArticleDOI
Why Do Humans Reason? Arguments for an Argumentative Theory
Hugo Mercier,Dan Sperber +1 more
TL;DR: The hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative: It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade and is adaptive given the exceptional dependence of humans on communication and their vulnerability to misinformation.
Journal ArticleDOI
TurkPrime.com: A versatile crowdsourcing data acquisition platform for the behavioral sciences
TL;DR: How TurkPrime saves time and resources, improves data quality, and allows researchers to design and implement studies that were previously very difficult or impossible to carry out on MTurk is described.
References
More filters
Book
Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
Amos Tversky,Daniel Kahneman +1 more
TL;DR: The authors described three heuristics that are employed in making judgements under uncertainty: representativeness, availability of instances or scenarios, and adjustment from an anchor, which is usually employed in numerical prediction when a relevant value is available.
Book
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
TL;DR: Putnam as mentioned in this paper showed that changes in work, family structure, age, suburban life, television, computers, women's roles and other factors are isolating Americans from each other in a trend whose reflection can clearly be seen in British society.
Book
Culture′s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values
TL;DR: In his book Culture's Consequences, Geert Hofstede proposed four dimensions on which the differences among national cultures can be understood: Individualism, Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance and Masculinity as mentioned in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI
Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation.
TL;DR: Theories of the self from both psychology and anthropology are integrated to define in detail the difference between a construal of self as independent and a construpal of the Self as interdependent as discussed by the authors, and these divergent construals should have specific consequences for cognition, emotion, and motivation.
Book
Culture′s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations Across Nations
TL;DR: In this paper, values and culture data collection, treatment and validation power distance Uncertainty Avoidance Individualism and Collectivism Masculinity and Femininity Long versus Short-Term Orientation Cultures in Organizations Intercultural Encounters Using Culture Dimension Scores in Theory and Research
Related Papers (5)
WEIRD languages have misled us, too [Comment on Henrich et al.]
Asifa Majid,Stephen C. Levinson +1 more
Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation.
Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science
Alexander A. Aarts,Joanna E. Anderson,Christopher J. Anderson,Peter Raymond Attridge,Peter Raymond Attridge,Angela S. Attwood,Jordan Axt,Molly Babel,Štěpán Bahník,Erica Baranski,Michael Barnett-Cowan,Elizabeth Bartmess,Jennifer S. Beer,Raoul Bell,Heather Bentley,Leah Beyan,Grace Binion,Grace Binion,Denny Borsboom,Annick Bosch,Frank A. Bosco,Sara Bowman,Mark J. Brandt,Erin L Braswell,Hilmar Brohmer,Benjamin T. Brown,Kristina G. Brown,Jovita Brüning,Jovita Brüning,Ann Calhoun-Sauls,Shannon P. Callahan,Elizabeth Chagnon,Jesse Chandler,Jesse Chandler,Christopher R. Chartier,Felix Cheung,Felix Cheung,Cody D. Christopherson,Linda Cillessen,Russ Clay,Hayley M. D. Cleary,Mark D. Cloud,Michael Conn,Johanna Cohoon,Simon Columbus,Andreas Cordes,Giulio Costantini,Leslie Cramblet Alvarez,Ed Cremata,Jan Crusius,Jamie DeCoster,Michelle A. DeGaetano,Nicolás Delia Penna,Bobby Den Bezemer,Marie K. Deserno,Olivia Devitt,Laura Dewitte,David G. Dobolyi,Geneva T. Dodson,M. Brent Donnellan,Ryan Donohue,Rebecca A. Dore,Angela Rachael Dorrough,Angela Rachael Dorrough,Anna Dreber,Michelle Dugas,Elizabeth W. Dunn,Kayleigh E Easey,Sylvia Eboigbe,Casey Eggleston,Jo Embley,Sacha Epskamp,Timothy M. Errington,Vivien Estel,Frank J. Farach,Jenelle Feather,Anna Fedor,Belén Fernández-Castilla,Susann Fiedler,James G. Field,Stanka A. Fitneva,Taru Flagan,Amanda L. Forest,Eskil Forsell,Joshua D. Foster,Michael C. Frank,Rebecca S. Frazier,Heather M. Fuchs,Philip A. Gable,Jeff Galak,Elisa Maria Galliani,Anup Gampa,Sara García,Douglas Gazarian,Elizabeth Gilbert,Roger Giner-Sorolla,Andreas Glöckner,Andreas Glöckner,Lars Goellner,Jin X. Goh,Rebecca M. Goldberg,Patrick T. Goodbourn,Shauna Gordon-McKeon,Bryan Gorges,Jessie Gorges,Justin Goss,Jesse Graham,James A. Grange,Jeremy R. Gray,Chris H.J. Hartgerink,Joshua K. Hartshorne,Fred Hasselman,Timothy Hayes,Emma Heikensten,Felix Henninger,Felix Henninger,John Hodsoll,Taylor Holubar,Gea Hoogendoorn,Denise J. Humphries,Cathy On-Ying Hung,Nathali Immelman,Vanessa C. Irsik,Georg Jahn,Frank Jäkel,Marc Jekel,Magnus Johannesson,Larissa Gabrielle Johnson,David J. Johnson,Kate M. Johnson,William J. Johnston,Kai J. Jonas,Jennifer A. Joy-Gaba,Heather Barry Kappes,Kim Kelso,Mallory C. Kidwell,Seung K. Kim,Matthew W. Kirkhart,Bennett Kleinberg,Bennett Kleinberg,Goran Knežević,Franziska Maria Kolorz,Jolanda J. Kossakowski,Robert Krause,Job Krijnen,Tim Kuhlmann,Yoram K. Kunkels,Megan M. Kyc,Calvin K. Lai,Aamir Laique,Daniel Lakens,Kristin A. Lane,Bethany Lassetter,Ljiljana B. Lazarević,Etienne P. Le Bel,Key Jung Lee,Minha Lee,Kristi M. Lemm,Carmel A. Levitan,Melissa Lewis,Lin Lin,Stephanie C. Lin,Matthias Lippold,Darren Loureiro,Ilse Luteijn,Sean P. Mackinnon,Heather N. Mainard,Denise C. Marigold,Daniel P. Martin,Tylar Martinez,E. J. Masicampo,Joshua J. Matacotta,Maya B. Mathur,Michael May,Michael May,Nicole Mechin,Pranjal H. Mehta,Johannes M. Meixner,Johannes M. Meixner,Alissa Melinger,Jeremy K. Miller,Mallorie Miller,Katherine Moore,Katherine Moore,Marcus Möschl,Matt Motyl,Stephanie M. Müller,Marcus R. Munafò,Koen Ilja Neijenhuijs,Taylor Nervi,Gandalf Nicolas,Gustav Nilsonne,Gustav Nilsonne,Brian A. Nosek,Brian A. Nosek,Michèle B. Nuijten,Catherine Olsson,Catherine Olsson,Colleen Osborne,Lutz Ostkamp,Misha Pavel,Ian S. Penton-Voak,Olivia Perna,Cyril Pernet,Marco Perugini,R. Nathan Pipitone,Michael C. Pitts,Franziska Plessow,Franziska Plessow,Jason M. Prenoveau,Rima-Maria Rahal,Rima-Maria Rahal,Kate A. Ratliff,David Reinhard,Frank Renkewitz,Ashley A. Ricker,Anastasia E. Rigney,Andrew M Rivers,Mark A. Roebke,Abraham M. Rutchick,Robert S. Ryan,Onur Sahin,Anondah R. Saide,Gillian M. Sandstrom,David Santos,David Santos,Rebecca Saxe,René Schlegelmilch,René Schlegelmilch,Kathleen Schmidt,Sabine Scholz,Larissa Seibel,Dylan Selterman,Samuel Shaki,William B. Simpson,H. Colleen Sinclair,Jeanine L. M. Skorinko,Agnieszka Slowik,Joel S. Snyder,Courtney K. Soderberg,Carina Sonnleitner,Nick Spencer,Jeffrey R. Spies,Sara Steegen,Stefan Stieger,Nina Strohminger,Gavin Brent Sullivan,Thomas Talhelm,Megan Tapia,Anniek M. te Dorsthorst,Manuela Thomae,Manuela Thomae,Sarah L. Thomas,Pia Tio,Frits Traets,Steve N.H. Tsang,Francis Tuerlinckx,Paul J. Turchan,Milan Valášek,Anna E. Van't Veer,Robbie C. M. van Aert,Marcel A.L.M. van Assen,Riet van Bork,Mathijs Van De Ven,Don van den Bergh,Marije van der Hulst,Roel van Dooren,Johnny van Doorn,Daan R. van Renswoude,Hedderik van Rijn,Wolf Vanpaemel,Alejandro Vásquez Echeverría,Melissa Vazquez,Natalia Vélez,Marieke Vermue,Mark Verschoor,Michelangelo Vianello,Martin Voracek,Gina Vuu,Eric-Jan Wagenmakers,Joanneke Weerdmeester,Ashlee Welsh,Erin C. Westgate,Joeri Wissink,Michael J. Wood,Andy T. Woods,Andy T. Woods,Emily M. Wright,Sining Wu,Marcel Zeelenberg,Kellylynn Zuni +290 more