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.


Episoder(416)

AMA | July 2021

AMA | July 2021

Welcome to the July 2021 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). I take the large number of questi...

9 Jul 20213h 49min

154 | Reza Aslan on Religion, Metaphor, and Meaning

154 | Reza Aslan on Religion, Metaphor, and Meaning

Religion is an important part of the lives of billions of people around the world, but what religious belief actually amounts to can vary considerably from person to person. Some believe in an anthrop...

5 Jul 20211h 25min

153 | John Preskill on Quantum Computers and What They're Good For

153 | John Preskill on Quantum Computers and What They're Good For

Depending on who you listen to, quantum computers are either the biggest technological change coming down the road or just another overhyped bubble. Today we're talking with a good person to listen to...

28 Jun 20211h 32min

152 | Charis Kubrin on Criminology, Incarceration, and Hip-Hop

152 | Charis Kubrin on Criminology, Incarceration, and Hip-Hop

It's all well and good to talk abstractly about morality and justice, but at some point you have to sit down and figure out what to do about people who break the rules. In our modern legal system, mos...

21 Jun 20211h 19min

151 | Jordan Ellenberg on the Mathematics of Political Boundaries

151 | Jordan Ellenberg on the Mathematics of Political Boundaries

Any system in which politicians represent geographical districts with boundaries chosen by the politicians themselves is vulnerable to gerrymandering: carving up districts to increase the amount of se...

14 Jun 20211h 23min

AMA | June 2021

AMA | June 2021

Welcome to the June 2021 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). I take the large number of questi...

10 Jun 20213h 18min

150 | Simon DeDeo on How Explanations Work and Why They Sometimes Fail

150 | Simon DeDeo on How Explanations Work and Why They Sometimes Fail

You observe a phenomenon, and come up with an explanation for it. That's true for scientists, but also for literally every person. (Why won't my car start? I bet it's out of gas.) But there are litera...

7 Jun 20211h 32min

149 | Lee Smolin on Time, Philosophy, and the Nature of Reality

149 | Lee Smolin on Time, Philosophy, and the Nature of Reality

The challenge to a theoretical physicist pushing beyond our best current theories is that there are too many ways to go. What parts of the existing paradigm do you keep, which do you discard, and why ...

31 Mai 20211h 29min

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