THE WEIRD DEBATE

Carly Wagner and Katelyne Griffin
October 10, 2019

Science Should be all Encompassing

  • One of the most important factors of experiments and studies is external validity
  • Without it research would only be relevant to the sample chosen
  • That is why there is an issue with studies that use W.E.I.R.D. samples

What WEIRD stands for and the issues that stem from it

  • W.E.I.R.D. stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic

  • 96% of psychological samples come from countries with only 12% of the world’s population (Henrich et al., 2010)

  • Using study participants from one unusual population could have important practical consequences

Reasons to move beyond W.E.I.R.D. samples

  • Differences exist in the presentation of Mental illnesses cross-culturally

  • Differences exist in those that are educated versus those that are not

  • Differences exist in english speakers versus non english speakers

Differences exist in the presentation of Mental illnesses cross-culturally

  • Culture influences the meaning that people attach to their mental illnesses(Office of the Surgeon General, 2001)

  • Anxiety and Mood disorders are less common in China than in the States (Psychology today ,2017 )

Differences exist in those that are educated versus those that are not

  • 60% of studies lack information about participant employment and education (Rad et al., 2018)

  • There are some similarities and differences between educated participants and those that are not

Differences exist in english speakers versus non english speakers

  • The majority of studies using W.E.I.R.D. populations come from english speaking countries (Rad et al., 2018)

How do we resolve the W.E.I.R.D. Problem?

  • Look into gathering samples that are more multicultural
  • Perform replications on past experiments and studies using non W.E.I.R.D. samples
  • Make global changes to behavioral research

References

  • De Vaus, J., Hornsey, M. J., Kuppens, P., & Bastian, B. (2017). Exploring the East-West divide in prevalence of affective disorder: A case for cultural differences in coping with negative emotion. Personality and Social Psychology Review. Advance online publication. DOI: 10.1177/1088868317736222

  • Office of the Surgeon General (US); Center for Mental Health Services (US); National Institute of Mental Health (US). Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity: A Supplement to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General. Rockville (MD): Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (US); 2001 Aug. Chapter 2 Culture Counts: The Influence of Culture and Society on Mental Health. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44249/

  • Cross-language differences in cortical dynamics Jianqiao Ge, Gang Peng, Bingjiang Lyu, Yi Wang, Yan Zhuo, Zhendong Niu, Li Hai Tan, Alexander P. Leff, Jia-Hong Gao Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Mar 2015, 112 (10) 2972-2977; DOI:10.1073/pnas.1416000112

  • Rad, M. S., Martingano, A. J., & Ginges, J. (2018). Toward a psychology of Homo sapiens: Making psychological science more representative of the human population. doi: 10.31234/osf.io/hfs3e

  • Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). Most people are not WEIRD. Nature, 466(7302), 29.

  • Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? SSRN Electronic Journal. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.1601785