Discussion

Abstract

Mainstream cognitive psychology and behavioural science more broadly have come under fire for primarily studying an extremely small, uniform and unrepresentative sample of the population. As psychologists Joseph Henrich, Steven Heine and Ara Norenzayan say in their paper ‘The Weirdest People in the World?’:

Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world’s top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers — often implicitly — assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these ‘standard subjects’ are as representative of the species as any other population.²

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.

T.S. Eliot¹