128 | Joseph Henrich on the Weirdness of the West

128 | Joseph Henrich on the Weirdness of the West

We all know stereotypes about people from different countries; but we also recognize that there really are broad cultural differences between people who grow up in different societies. This raises a challenge when most psychological research is performed on a narrow and unrepresentative slice of the world's population — a subset that has accurately been labeled as WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic). Joseph Henrich has argued that focusing on this group has led to systematic biases in how we think about human psychology. In his new book, he proposes a surprising theory for how WEIRD people got that way, based on the Church insisting on the elimination of marriage to relatives. It's an audacious idea that nudges us to rethink how the WEIRD world came to be.

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Joseph Henrich received his Ph.D. in anthropology from UCLA. He is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. Among his awards are a Fulbright scholarship, a Presidential Early Career Award, the Killam Research Prize, and the Wegner Theoretical Innovation Prize. His trade books include The Secret of Our Success: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smart, and the new The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous.


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168 | Anil Seth on Emergence, Information, and Consciousness

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167 | Chiara Marletto on Constructor Theory, Physics, and Possibility

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166 | Betül Kaçar on Paleogenomics and Ancient Life

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165 | Kathryn Paige Harden on Genetics, Luck, and Fairness

165 | Kathryn Paige Harden on Genetics, Luck, and Fairness

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AMA | September 2021

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164 | Herbert Gintis on Game Theory, Evolution, and Social Rationality

164 | Herbert Gintis on Game Theory, Evolution, and Social Rationality

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163 | Nigel Goldenfeld on Phase Transitions, Criticality, and Biology

163 | Nigel Goldenfeld on Phase Transitions, Criticality, and Biology

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162 | Leidy Klotz on Our Resistance to Subtractive Change

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