2.5 WEIRD Societies
Joseph Henrich and colleagues use the acronym WEIRD to refer to those raised in Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democracies. WEIRD people are highly individualistic, focused on personal growth, nonconformist, and analytical. They are the minority of the population of the world. (Recent data suggested that WEIRD people represent about 12% of the world’s population but nearly 90% of psychological samples!) The nonWEIRD, raised in other contexts, think of themselves as members of communities.
This distinction is important because most of the knowledge we have about psychology, economy, marriage and family systems, and value systems comes to us through the lens of the WEIRD. For example, we pay college students at American universities to participate in studies exploring the human brain and then routinely generalize from such studies to characterize all of humanity. Yet, American college students, drawn from Western, educated, industrial, rich democracies, represent a WEIRD sample of humanity.
Yet, some scholars suggest that simply diversifying the study populations may not go far enough. Rather than sending WEIRD scholars out to observe and work with nonWEIRD populations, Mohammed Atari suggests that research should also be done by members of nonWEIRD societies who have a working knowledge of their culture. This provides an emic perspective on developing research questions and solving problems that are important to the study population, and removes some of the etic lens of the WEIRD.
Unfortunately, there is a large body of research based upon this population that does not generalize outside WEIRD populations, and this literature perpetuates ethnocentrism and now defunct explanations like unilineal cultural evolution. This results in biases in the media, pop culture, religion, literature, music – you name it! In fact, if we take a broader, global look at human behavior, we find that the data from WEIRD studies represent only a small portion of human behavior!
It’s important to note: this doesn’t mean that data from WEIRD societies is irrelevant or unimportant. In reality, with nearly 60% of the world’s population now living in urban spaces, WEIRD studies may become valuable yet again. But they should be taken with a grain of salt until more cross-cultural data are collected.
Click here to read a brief article published by the American Psychological Association titled “Are your findings ‘WEIRD’?” |
Of or pertaining to people, ideas, and data collected from Western, Educated, Industrial Rich, and Democratic societies.
A study population or research done from inside a group; the internal perspective.
Research done from outside a group; the external perspective.
the belief that one’s own culture is the only right or natural way of being.
the belief that cultures exist on a continuum of more or less evolved.
Relating to different cultures or comparison between them.
