Most psychology experiments are run on Western university students. And those students turn out to be the strangest humans on the planet.
WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic. Harvard anthropologist Joseph Henrich uses it in The WEIRDest People in the World (2020) to argue that the “human nature” in the textbooks is the exception, not the norm.
What he describes in WEIRD populations, compared to most of history and the world:
- Impersonal prosociality: more trust in strangers, less loyalty to the clan. Also more individualism, less conformity and deference to elders.
- Impartial, universal rules, morality judged by intentions, and more guilt (private) than shame (public). See Guilt, shame and fear cultures.
- Patience and self-control, which he says adjust to the institutions you live under.
- Analytic thinking over holistic. He links schooling and literacy to rising IQ scores and reads part of the Flynn effect that way, next to better nutrition.
Where it comes from, in his story: the medieval Church banned cousin marriage and polygamy and changed inheritance rules, which broke up clans into nuclear families, and minds followed.
Careful with one thing. I had it noted as “a better world”, but that framing isn’t Henrich’s: he presents it mostly as a description, WEIRD as the odd one out, not the winner. Some reviewers do read it as the West coming out ahead in some ways, at a cost, and historians have criticized the book for simplifying the past.
Different, not better. Or better at some things. Your call.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/09/joseph-henrich-explores-weird-societies/