By Chris Satullo
Don’t know how to break it to you, but you’re WEIRD.
If it’s any comfort, so am I. So are the bulk of Americans. In the world of psychological research, WEIRD is a much-discussed acronym. It stands for:
- Western
- Educated
- Industrialized
- Rich
- Democratic
Before you object – “Hey, bub, who you callin’ rich? I’m barely getting by” – understand that the term here is being deployed in relation to the bulk of the world’s population. By that measure, a huge majority of Americans qualify as very well off indeed.
The concept of WEIRD-ness has in the last few years been fueling an important and sweeping reconsideration of some foundational psychological research. Turns out that much of the research – no matter how carefully designed within the norms of elite academe, no matter how rigorously peer reviewed – had a serious, built-in flaw:
The subjects of the research all tended to be the kind of middle- or upper-middle-class people who live near the campuses of elite universities. Often, they were students of those same universities, making them an unusually well-educated, if emotionally incomplete, sample. And most of them had grown up in a society drenched, mostly uncritically, in the concepts of individualism, rationality, progress and skepticism of dogma and institutions. What’s more, by and large, they lived in comfortable enough circumstances that poverty, disease and imminent extinction were not daily concerns.
None of those things are terrible traits, in and of themselves. Some of them are quite pleasant and others even admirable. But they add up to a package that is quite different from the experience of about 85 percent of the world’s population.
So, you can see that any such research that tries to discern salient truths about human psychology – as opposed to Western, Education, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic psychology – sits atop a rickety, limited foundation. Turns out, even some of the simplest and most common tools of the research psychologist, like the Likert scale, draw very different responses and results in other societies around the globe.
It’s to the discipline’s credit that it has recognized this problem and begun talking about how to remedy it.
But the narcissism of overly WEIRD research is replicated all too often in American politics, American diplomacy and American societal attitudes. When we see people in other cultures thinking and acting in the non-WEIRD ways that come naturally to them based on their history, geography and cultural norms, we assume these are mistakes which it is incumbent upon us to remedy.
Yes, I would still insist that some of those norms rooted in non-WEIRDNESS – e.g. the Taliban’s treatment of women – are wrongful and need not be endorsed out of some spirit of cultural tolerance.
But these shock waves from the world of psychology should, it would seem, prompt some attitude adjustment in many Americans. Perhaps we should generally be more cautious, careful and humble in assessing the norms of other cultures, less eager to parachute into spots all over the globe saying, “You’re doing it all wrong. Let us fix that for you.”
Final thought: When I look at the American scene today – littered as it is with anti-vaxxers, Jan. 6 apologists, identity obsessives, grievance mongerers and worshipers of screw-you individualism – it’s pretty clear that WEIRD culture is having its own breakdown. Perhaps we should look to shift our own culture’s defining acronym to something more appetizing and helpful in this time of global crisis.
How about…WISED UP.
W is for Welcoming, as in a nation that remembers what makes it extraordinary, which is the way it has repeatedly – not without conflict, not without injustice, but eventually – turned immigrant waves into American faves.
I is for Innovative, as in a nation that refuses to stay paralyzed by wicked problems like climate change, that combines ingenuity with discipline to drive big solutions to big woes.
S is for Sustainable, as in a nation that figures out how to grow and prosper without despoiling its land, air and water – or doing similar bad things in other nations.
E is for Educated, as in a nation where everyone has a fair crack at that most precious of possessions.
D is for Democratic, a concept which, despite all its failings in practice, is still the best system that human beings have ever designed for rising above a Hobbesian state of nature.
U is for Urbanist, because designing ways for more people to live closer to one another in peace is still one of the best ways to preserve this planet’s resources.
And P is for Persevering, because a lot of what ails us will resist swift improvement. We must surmount our childish penchant for demanding that solutions arrive at the nuance-free velocity of Twitter.
Yes, we’re WEIRD, which does not actually equate to “wise.” But neither does it prevent us from, someday, somehow, wising up.
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Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia