Key insights from
The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous
Audio available
13 minute read
Published Sep 8, 2020
What you'll learn
Western. Educated. Industrialized. Rich. Democratic. These factors combine to form the acronym “WEIRD,” a term used to describe the most statistically unusual societies to have existed across history and geography. Harvard professor of evolutionary biology Joseph Henrich tracks the emergence of this novel group of people and seeks to explain how their quirks have helped them flourish.
Key insights
- • What you'll learn
- 1 There’s never been a cultural psychology as peculiar as WEIRD culture.
- 2 Intentions and disposition carry much more weight in WEIRD morality than in other cultures.
- 3 Outside WEIRD societies, identity statements are tied to relationships.
- 4 Preferring cash over checks, strength of mafia presence, and frequency of blood donations have been predicted by a society’s rates of cousin marriage.
- 5 WEIRD psychology would never have been possible without the Western Church weakening kinship bonds.
- 6 Centuries into the future, all of the world’s current psychologies will seem “weird” in the eyes of posterity.
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