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Oct 28, 2017 · A large proportion of psychology studies rely on participants recruited from WEIRD (White, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) groups. A study's reliance on a limited population of...
May 1, 2010 · They found that people from Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD) societies — who represent as much as 80 percent of study participants, but only 12 percent of the world’s population — are not only unrepresentative of humans as a species, but on many measures they’re outliers.
In this paper, we focus on the use of samples in Psychology that are not representative of the broader population. This misrepresentation is due to the over reliance of Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic (WEIRD) people.
- Why the acronym WEIRD? The acronym WEIRD—Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic—aims to raise people’s consciousness about psychological differences and to emphasize that WEIRD people are but one unusual slice of humanity’s cultural diversity.
- And yet you caution readers not to set up a WEIRD vs. non-WEIRD dichotomy as they read your book. Can you expand on that? That’s right. While WEIRD should raise people’s consciousness about psychological differences, it’s not meant to suggest a simplistic dichotomy or binary worldview.
- What are the big questions this book aims to answer? I’d say there are three, and they are interrelated. First, how can we explain the psychological diversity that has now been documented around the world?
- What’s the connection between culture and psychology? Our minds are frequently understood using a misleading digital computer metaphor, with our brains and psychological processes as the hardware and our cultures—our values, customs and know-how—as the software.
Aug 12, 2024 · Extreme and minority views are often overrepresented in the media, making them appear to be more common and acceptable than they are. Weird-checking communicates what others actually believe and can disrupt these inflated perceptions of consensus.
Psychology has a WEIRD problem. It is overly reliant on participants from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies. Over the last decade this problem has come to be widely acknowledged, yet there has been little progress toward making psychology more diverse.
Jul 11, 2022 · As described in the article that coined the term, the overreliance on WEIRD samples limits the generalizability of psychology research: WEIRD participants represent only a thin slice of the...
