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It’s time to reimagine sample diversity and retire the WEIRD dichotomy

Nature Human Behaviour volume 5, pages 971–972 (2021)Cite this article

The world’s population does not split neatly into two groups, WEIRD and non-WEIRD people, argues Sakshi Ghai. Because the non-WEIRD brush does not do justice to the complexity of human lives, she calls upon behavioural science to ensure that samples represent human diversity.

I have, however, recently realized that the WEIRD acronym glosses over many important dimensions of human diversity, having tried to code it in my own research. The WEIRD taxonomy dichotomizes categories — Western versus non-Western, industrialized versus small-scale, poor versus rich — and this bipartite classification can lead to misleading and confounding scientific insights. For example, Henrich’s definition of Western includes countries in northwestern Europe and British-descent societies, accounting for about 8% of the world’s population. It therefore paints almost 92% of the human species with one homogenous, non-Western brush and flattens our understanding of human experience. Some anthropologists have argued that WEIRD can be construed as a synonym for white, evoking deep-rooted colonial sentiments.

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Sakshi Ghai

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  1. Sakshi Ghai
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Correspondence to Sakshi Ghai.

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Ghai, S. It’s time to reimagine sample diversity and retire the WEIRD dichotomy. Nat Hum Behav 5, 971–972 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01175-9

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