Is psychology the same across cultures? (with Joseph Henrich)

1. Recognize WEIRD Cultural Bias

Use the “WEIRD” (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) acronym as a consciousness-raising device to acknowledge the psychological and cultural variation globally, preventing assumptions that one’s own culture is universal.

2. Question Generalizability of Psychology

Recognize that much of what is known about human psychology is derived from “WEIRD” populations, implying that these findings may not generalize to the majority of the world’s population.

3. Embrace Multi-Dimensional Intelligence

Avoid thinking of intelligence as a single dimension; instead, recognize that different sociocultural environments demand and cultivate different sets of cognitive abilities, each well-suited for navigating its specific world.

4. Shape Cognitive Architecture Through Practice

Recognize that engaging in specific activities over time can alter your brain’s cognitive architecture, leading to enhanced basic capabilities and different information processing.

5. Value Diverse Cultural Knowledge

Understand that even highly educated individuals lack basic survival skills in unfamiliar environments, highlighting the critical importance of culturally accumulated knowledge for adapting to diverse conditions.

6. Cultivate Unique Personal Attributes

In individualistic societies, focus on cultivating your unique attributes and aspirations to stand out, which is beneficial for making friends, finding mates, and securing business partners.

7. Seek Diverse Partners for Innovation

When seeking business partners or collaborators, prioritize the best person based on individual traits like honesty, rather than relying on existing social networks, to foster greater recombination of ideas and innovation.

8. Foster Diversity for Collective Brain

To fuel innovation and creativity, ensure a large population, promote social interconnectedness for free idea exchange, and cultivate diverse minds to maximize useful exchanges between individuals.

9. Distinguish Prosociality Types

Understand that prosociality varies between impersonal (towards strangers) and interpersonal (towards those connected to you) forms, and that cultures may excel in one type over the other rather than being universally more or less generous.

10. Resist Linear Cultural Change Thinking

Avoid the analytic tendency to think about cultural change along a linear dimension; instead, recognize that imported institutions synthesize with local ways, creating new, non-linear cultural dimensions.

11. Adopt Theory-First Research

When testing a theory, prioritize the theory itself and seek any available data from diverse fields (anthropology, psychology, economics) to support or refute it, rather than being constrained by a single methodological approach.

12. Integrate Observation and Experimentation

Foster an ongoing conversation between observational and experimental research, using observation to inform experiment planning and experimental results to guide further ethnographic inquiry.

13. Conduct Ethnographic Research

To deeply understand how minds are shaped, engage in observational and ethnographic research by living with people to comprehend their daily challenges, activities, and problem-solving approaches.

14. Study Historical Psychology

Engage in historical psychology by using texts and other data sources to infer past mental states, allowing for the tracking of psychological changes across space and time.

15. Strengthen Arguments with Diverse Evidence

When presenting findings, gather and integrate multiple lines of evidence from various academic disciplines to significantly strengthen the overall argument and conclusions.