Being Weird

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I'm weird. Chances are that you're weird. In fact the society you live in is probably weird too. Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic. It's an acronym that was new to me until I read this piece about the work of Joe Henrich, a professor in Psychology and Economics at the University of British Columbia.

Dr Henrich is the co-author of a paper that is creating something of a stir in the fields of psychology, behavioural economics and cognitive science by questioning the validity of broad claims about human psychology and behaviour using studies which are based on samples drawn entirely from WEIRD societies. His researchers found that 96% of behavioural science experiment subjects are from Western industrialized countries, yet these countries account for just 12% of the world's population. In the field of psychology, the US accounts for 70% of all journal citations, compared with 37% in chemistry. Sometimes, a group of undergraduate students are used to stand in for the entire species.

The huge assumption behind the conclusions of many behavioural studies is that these samples are representative of all humans, and that there is little variation across human populations. In reality, says Henrich, this is not true. Psychology varies across cultures in ways that chemistry doesn't. WEIRD subjects are often outliers -  unusual compared with the rest of the species, seeing the world in ways that contrast with the rest of the human family, and reacting differently in experiments involving measures of visual perception (illustrated by distinct  reactions to well-known optical illusions like the Muller-Lyer illusion), fairness and co-operation (disimilar results to common economic experiments like The Ultimatum Game), categorization (westerners group objects based on resemblance so for example notebooks and magazines go together, while Chinese people prefer function, so a notebook would go with a pencil), questions of individualism and conformity, reasoning styles, and concepts of self. WEIRD societies, says Henrich, are among the least representative populations for generalizing about humans, and "if you're a Westerner, your intuitions about human psychology are probably wrong or at least there's good reason to believe they're wrong". Us WEIRD people, apparently, really are the weird ones.

It's a challenging point of view. And a reminder perhaps that we don't always know what we think we know.

Comments

[Jon]

It's so easy for us humans to focus on OUR local environment and apply it to all of humanity. Here in WeirdoWorld, we have some measure of better means of dissimilating our views. We have things we call 'progress', things which in an objective analysis are actually having a negative on our development. But they are 'good' for aforementioned 'progress',so we pat ourselves on the back while adjusting our blinders...

We think that things like this make us the epitome of the species. We think everyone would be better off if only they were all like us.

Perhaps the concept of 'epitome' in human development is flawed? It's a process, after all, which we all hope never ends (assuming the end of development is the end of growth, ie., the end of us.)

Regardless, it's an epic fail (in my opinion) of Western thought that our research focuses only on our sub-civilization and yet we apply our 'findings' to the whole of the species.

Good post, thanks.

[Brook Calverley]

Nice post, great to see these ideas circulated.

Hwvr surprised to learn the paper "is creating something of a stir" among practitioners. The notion of non-representative sample groups is hardly new.

Desmond Morris (of Naked Ape fame) pointed out something similar, in the field of anthropology, years ago.

In that instance the analytical flaw was heading in the other direction: he argued that by studying remote, isolated communities (usually aboriginal groups living in relatively simple communities) researchers were studying unsuccessful / atypical cultures, extrapolating their findings to cover wider humanity.

The WEIRD groups are bigger but the problem of representation remains the same.

Makes me wonder if the error of generalisation lies not with the researchers and more with the lay media that interprets and reports on their findings?

Brook
@brookcalverley

[neilperkin]

Thanks for the comments

@brook - yes, that's an interesting point about the media - and no doubt true. I'm not so surprised by the tendency to extrapolate up - it seems it is (at least according to Henrich and co) a well-recognised but little talked about flaw in the fields talked about here.