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Beyond WEIRD: Towards a broad-based behavioral science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2010

Joseph Henrich
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver V6T 1Z4 Canada. joseph.henrich@gmail.com http://www.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/home.html heine@psych.ubc.ca ara@psych.ubc.ca Department of Economics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver V6T 1Z4, Canada.
Steven J. Heine
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver V6T 1Z4 Canada. joseph.henrich@gmail.com http://www.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/home.html heine@psych.ubc.ca ara@psych.ubc.ca
Ara Norenzayan
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver V6T 1Z4 Canada. joseph.henrich@gmail.com http://www.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/home.html heine@psych.ubc.ca ara@psych.ubc.ca

Abstract

In our response to the 28 (largely positive) commentaries from an esteemed collection of researchers, we (1) consolidate additional evidence, extensions, and amplifications offered by our commentators; (2) emphasize the value of integrating experimental and ethnographic methods, and show how researchers using behavioral games have done precisely this; (3) present our concerns with arguments from several commentators that separate variable “content” from “computations” or “basic processes”; (4) address concerns that the patterns we highlight marking WEIRD people as psychological outliers arise from aspects of the researchers and the research process; (5) respond to the claim that as members of the same species, humans must have the same invariant psychological processes; (6) address criticisms of our telescoping contrasts; and (7) return to the question of explaining why WEIRD people are psychologically unusual. We believe a broad-based behavioral science of human nature needs to integrate a variety of methods and apply them to diverse populations, well beyond the WEIRD samples it has largely relied upon.

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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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