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Epub 2010 Jun 15. The weirdest people in the world? Joseph Henrich  1 , Steven J Heine, Ara Norenzayan Affiliations Expand Affiliation 1 Department of Psychology and Department of Economics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver V6T 1Z4, Canada. joseph.henrich@gmail.com PMID: 20550733 DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X0999152X Free article Item in Clipboard The weirdest people in the world? Joseph Henrich et al. Behav Brain Sci. 2010 Jun. Free article Show details Display options Display options Format Abstract PubMed PMID Behav Brain Sci Actions Search in PubMed Search in NLM Catalog Add to Search . 2010 Jun;33(2-3):61-83; discussion 83-135. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X0999152X. Epub 2010 Jun 15. Authors Joseph Henrich  1 , Steven J Heine, Ara Norenzayan Affiliation 1 Department of Psychology and Department of Economics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver V6T 1Z4, Canada. joseph.henrich@gmail.com PMID: 20550733 DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X0999152X Item in Clipboard Full text links CiteDisplay options Display options Format Abstract PubMed PMID Abstract Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers - often implicitly - assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these "standard subjects" are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species - frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior - hence, there are no obvious a priori grounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of human nature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges. Similar articles Weird people, yes, but also weird experiments. Baumard N, Sperber D. Baumard N, et al. Behav Brain Sci. 2010 Jun;33(2-3):84-5. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X10000038. Epub 2010 Jun 15. Behav Brain Sci. 2010. PMID: 20550737 The weirdest brains in the world. Chiao JY, Cheon BK. Chiao JY, et al. Behav Brain Sci. 2010 Jun;33(2-3):88-90. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X10000282. Epub 2010 Jun 15. Behav Brain Sci. 2010. PMID: 20546651 Culture and the quest for universal principles in moral reasoning. Sachdeva S, Singh P, Medin D. Sachdeva S, et al. Int J Psychol. 2011 Jun 1;46(3):161-76. doi: 10.1080/00207594.2011.568486. Int J Psychol. 2011. PMID: 22044230 Review. Responsible behavioral science generalizations and applications require much more than non-WEIRD samples. Konecni VJ. Konecni VJ. Behav Brain Sci. 2010 Jun;33(2-3):98-9. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X10000142. Epub 2010 Jun 15. Behav Brain Sci. 2010. PMID: 20546663 A framework for the unification of the behavioral sciences. Gintis H. Gintis H. Behav Brain Sci. 2007 Feb;30(1):1-16; discussion 16-61. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X07000581. Behav Brain Sci. 2007. PMID: 17475022 Review. See all similar articles Cited by 681 articles Neural signatures of syntactic variation in speech planning. Sauppe S, Choudhary KK, Giroud N, Blasi DE, Norcliffe E, Bhattamishra S, Gulati M, Egurtzegi A, Bornkessel-Schlesewsky I, Meyer M, Bickel B. Sauppe S, et al. PLoS Biol. 2021 Jan 26;19(1):e3001038. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001038. eCollection 2021 Jan. PLoS Biol. 2021. PMID: 33497384 Free PMC article. The social function of the feeling and expression of guilt. 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Jones BC, DeBruine LM, Flake JK, Liuzza MT, Antfolk J, Arinze NC, Ndukaihe ILG, Bloxsom NG, Lewis SC, Foroni F, Willis ML, Cubillas CP, Vadillo MA, Turiegano E, Gilead M, Simchon A, Saribay SA, Owsley NC, Jang C, Mburu G, Calvillo DP, Wlodarczyk A, Qi Y, Ariyabuddhiphongs K, Jarukasemthawee S, Manley H, Suavansri P, Taephant N, Stolier RM, Evans TR, Bonick J, Lindemans JW, Ashworth LF, Hahn AC, Chevallier C, Kapucu A, Karaaslan A, Leongómez JD, Sánchez OR, Valderrama E, Vásquez-Amézquita M, Hajdu N, Aczel B, Szecsi P, Andreychik M, Musser ED, Batres C, Hu CP, Liu QL, Legate N, Vaughn LA, Barzykowski K, Golik K, Schmid I, Stieger S, Artner R, Mues C, Vanpaemel W, Jiang Z, Wu Q, Marcu GM, Stephen ID, Lu JG, Philipp MC, Arnal JD, Hehman E, Xie SY, Chopik WJ, Seehuus M, Azouaghe S, Belhaj A, Elouafa J, Wilson JP, Kruse E, Papadatou-Pastou M, De La Rosa-Gómez A, Barba-Sánchez AE, González-Santoyo I, Hsu T, Kung CC, Wang HH, Freeman JB, Oh DW, Schei V, Sverdrup TE, Levitan CA, Cook CL, Chandel P, Kujur P, Parganiha A, Parveen N, Pati AK, Pradhan S, Singh MM, Pande B, Bavolar J, Kačmár P, Zakharov I, Álvarez-Solas S, Baskin E, Thirkettle M, Schmidt K, Christopherson CD, Leonis T, Suchow JW, Olofsson JK, Jernsäther T, Lee AS, Beaudry JL, Gogan TD, Oldmeadow JA, Balas B, Stevens LM, Colloff MF, Flowe HD, Gülgöz S, Brandt MJ, Hoyer K, Jaeger B, Ren D, Sleegers WWA, Wissink J, Kaminski G, Floerke VA, Urry HL, Chen SC, Pfuhl G, Vally Z, Basnight-Brown DM, Jzerman HI, Sarda E, Neyroud L, Badidi T, Van der Linden N, Tan CBY, Kovic V, Sampaio W, Ferreira P, Santos D, Burin DI, Gardiner G, Protzko J, Schild C, Ścigała KA, Zettler I, O'Mara Kunz EM, Storage D, Wagemans FMA, Saunders B, Sirota M, Sloane GV, Lima TJS, Uittenhove K, Vergauwe E, Jaworska K, Stern J, Ask K, van Zyl CJJ, Körner A, Weissgerber SC, Boudesseul J, Ruiz-Dodobara F, Ritchie KL, Michalak NM, Blake KR, White D, Gordon-Finlayson AR, Anne M, Janssen SMJ, Lee KM, Nielsen TK, Tamnes CK, Zickfeld JH, Rosa AD, Vianello M, Kocsor F, Kozma L, Putz Á, Tressoldi P, Irrazabal N, Chatard A, Lins S, Pinto IR, Lutz J, Adamkovic M, Babincak P, Baník G, Ropovik I, Coetzee V, Dixson BJW, Ribeiro G, Peters K, Steffens NK, Tan KW, Thorstenson CA, Fernandez AM, Hsu RMCS, Valentova JV, Varella MAC, Corral-Frías NS, Frías-Armenta M, Hatami J, Monajem A, Sharifian M, Frohlich B, Lin H, Inzlicht M, Alaei R, Rule NO, Lamm C, Pronizius E, Voracek M, Olsen J, Giolla EM, Akgoz A, Özdoğru AA, Crawford MT, Bennett-Day B, Koehn MA, Okan C, Gill T, Miller JK, Dunham Y, Yang X, Alper S, Borras-Guevara ML, Cai SJ, Tiantian D, Danvers AF, Feinberg DR, Armstrong MM, Gilboa-Schechtman E, McCarthy RJ, Muñoz-Reyes JA, Polo P, Shiramazu VKM, Yan WJ, Carvalho L, Forscher PS, Chartier CR, Coles NA. 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