Is Behavioral Science Too WEIRD?

What is normal behavior? Understanding and contextualizing human actions has important implications for a wide range of disciplines, including biology, medicine, economics, political science, psychology, sociology, etc. Yet, as the paper "The Weirdest People in the World?" points out, 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." As example, analyses of the top journals in psychology, including the prestigious Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, revealed that 68% of subjects came from the U.S., and a full 96% of subjects were from Western industrialized countries. Subject pools in experimental economics and decision science are similarly dominated by Westerners, particularly college undergraduates. Worse, despite sampling from a very narrow pool of subjects, researchers basically 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." Huh? Well, you know that what they say about people who assume.

The paper's authors, Messrs. Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan, reviewed studies on visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. They find that not only are WEIRD subjects not drawn from near the center of human distribution but they are frequently outliers with respect to the rest of the species! Which means that they are probably the least representative populations "one could find for generalizing about humans." Comedian Ronny Chieng understands, as he pointedly skewers Western ethnocentrism and sample bias.   

(We recommend the whole set)

It's also worth noting that the U.S.-based behavioral scientists conducting the majority of research are themselves (not surprisingly) drawn from a similarly thin slice of humanity. (Interestingly enough, there seems to be significant gender and pay equity in behavioral sciences...but that's neither here nor there). So, if behavioral science really is that biased it could undercut many findings that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior. You'd think Henrich et al's findings (published in 2010) would have spurred much needed change...umm, not so much. Despite researchers being more aware of sampling biases, significant challenges remain. Kudos at least to the BBC which has a dedicated website, Weird West, tackling what really is "normal" from hygiene habits to child rearing practices.