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Wednesday 29 May 2024

WEIRD societies

OK. So who has heard of WEIRD societies? I ran across this term while reading a library book about colour recently (Parkinson, 2023). This acronym stands for those societies which are Western, educated, industrialised, rich, and democratic (Henrich et al., 2010). WEIRD seems to be used as code for how minor the total population numbers of WEIRD societies are in comparison for nonWEIRD societies; yet how much WEIRD societies dominate the research, how biased the research samples may be, or how truly generalisable are the results. For example:

"Western, and more specifically American, undergraduates who form the bulk of the database in the experimental branches of psychology, cognitive science, and economics, as well as allied fields [... or] the 'behavioral sciences'" (Henrich et al., 2010, p. 61).

Yes, post-war research has been significantly shaped by US interests since the late 1940s. The US had the money, the people, and the higher education systems, and lots of war research which could be expanded. Unlike Europe or Asia, the US didn't need to rebuild infrastructure. The Americans recruited academics from around the world, and looked for how results could be monetised. They were smart, and commercial.

But when studying these societies, perhaps we need to remember that the WEIRD group only forms between 12% (Henrich et al., 2010) and 12.5% of the global population (Volsche, 2022). 

We could take note that an "analysis of the top journals in six subdisciplines of psychology from 2003 to 2007 revealed that 68% of subjects came from the United States, and a full 96% of subjects were from Western industrialized countries, specifically those in North America and Europe, as well as Australia and Israel" (Henrich et al., 2010, p. 63, citing Arnett, 2008). They go on to note that "a randomly selected American undergraduate is more than 4,000 times more likely to be a research participant than is a randomly selected person from outside of the West" (p. 63).

So we spend loads of time NOT researching 87.5 or 88% of the world. Ouch. That is hardly representative. Worse, WEIRD societies are highly individualised, focused on personal growth, not societal or community growth (Henrich et al., 2010).

And, as Volsche (2022) wisely points out, our focus on WEIRD societies in research should also make us more aware of the emic and etic debate (read more here).


Sam

References:

Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world?. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2-3), 61-83. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X0999152X

Parkinson, N. (2023). The History of Color: A universe of chromatic phenomena. Frances Lincoln.

Volsche, S. (2022). 2.5 WEIRD Societies. In Introduction to Evolution & Human Behavior. https://boisestate.pressbooks.pub/evolutionhumanbehavior/chapter/2-5-weird-societies/

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