WWtGDO

Is a WEIRD world a better world

4 min read

My note said it flat: a WEIRD world is a better world. More IQ, less impulsive, less tribal, more fair.

Is any of that true? And is “better” even the right word?

WEIRD = Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic. What Joseph Henrich claims is summarised in WEIRD people. This is the other side: for each claim, where it comes from and what the critics say.

Where it starts. Henrich, The WEIRDest People in the World (2020), and the paper that coined the acronym: Henrich, Heine & Norenzayan, “The weirdest people in the world?” (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2010). That paper was a warning: psychology generalises from a tiny, odd slice of humanity. Outliers, not winners. So “better” was my word, not theirs.

1. More IQ

  • Henrich links schooling and literacy to analytic thinking and to rising IQ scores (the Flynn effect: about 3 points per decade through the 20th century).
  • Against: James Flynn himself argued the gains don’t mean people got smarter, but that modern schooling trains the abstract, “scientific” habits IQ tests reward. And cross-cultural IQ comparisons carry their own test-bias fights.

2. Less impulsive

  • Henrich: WEIRD people are more patient, and patience adjusts to institutions.
  • Against: delay-of-gratification tests are culture-bound. In Yanaoka et al. (2022), Japanese kids waited far longer than American kids for a marshmallow (roughly 15 vs 5 minutes; in Japan you wait until everyone is served), while American kids waited longer to open a gift. What looks like self-control is partly a learned habit about what you wait for. And in the 2018 conceptual replication of the marshmallow test (Watts, Duncan & Quan, Psychological Science), the link between waiting at 4 and achievement at 15 came out about half the original size, and shrank by two thirds more once family background and early ability were controlled for.

3. Less tribal

  • Henrich: impersonal prosociality, trust in strangers and universal rules, less clan loyalty.
  • Against: tribalism may just move house, from kin to politics. In a comparison of twelve rich democracies over four decades (Boxell, Gentzkow & Shapiro, 2020), affective polarization (disliking the other party) grew most in the US, grew less in five countries and actually fell in six. So WEIRD doesn’t come with one fixed dose of tribe. Less loyal to your cousins isn’t the same as less tribal.

4. More fair

  • Henrich: impartial rules for everyone, morality judged by intentions.
  • Against: fairness isn’t one scale. In the ultimatum-game experiments in fifteen small-scale societies that Henrich himself co-led (American Economic Review 2001, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 2005), offers varied a lot, tracking things like market integration. Among the Au and Gnau of Papua New Guinea, some offers were above 50%, and those were rejected about as often as the stingy ones: accepting a gift puts you in debt, on the giver’s terms. WEIRD fairness is one version of fairness, not the only one.

About the history (the medieval Church banning cousin marriage and breaking up clans): historians reply that the Church didn’t have the muscle to impose that everywhere, and that geography, agriculture and the state also eroded kinship. One objection I found: Scandinavia comes out top on patience and trust despite centuries less exposure to the Church’s marriage rules. I haven’t checked that one against the data myself.

Still open: better for whom, measured how? The WEIRD traits came with prosperity, and also with loneliness, individualism and a hard time with obligations to others.

I don’t have a verdict. If you have a good critical reference on any of the four, send it my way.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/09/joseph-henrich-explores-weird-societies/

Also: Guilt, shame and fear cultures

Sources for the objections:

Graph View