Why Are WEIRD Studies Problematic?: Particularly Thin, and Rather Unusual, Slice of Humanity

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Why are WEIRD (particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity) studies problematic?

assume that either there is little variation across human populations


that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population

there is substantial variability in experimental results (The domains reviewed include de facto
psychological universals: visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and
inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the
heritability of IQ) across populations
there are no obvious a priori grounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is
universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation
WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species – frequent outliers
members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative
populations one could find for generalizing about humans

Why are WEIRD (particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity) studies problematic?

assume that either there is little variation across human populations


that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population

there is substantial variability in experimental results (The domains reviewed include de facto
psychological universals: visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and
inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the
heritability of IQ) across populations
there are no obvious a priori grounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is
universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation
WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species – frequent outliers
members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative
populations one could find for generalizing about humans

Why are WEIRD (particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity) studies problematic?

assume that either there is little variation across human populations


that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population

there is substantial variability in experimental results (The domains reviewed include de facto
psychological universals: visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and
inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the
heritability of IQ) across populations
there are no obvious a priori grounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is
universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation
WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species – frequent outliers
members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative
populations one could find for generalizing about humans

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