The WEIRDest People in the World
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous'' is a 2020 book by Harvard professor
Joseph Henrich Joseph Henrich (born 1968) is an American professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University. Prior to arriving at Harvard, Henrich was a professor of psychology and economics at the University of British Columbia. He is interested i ...
that aims to explain history and psychological variation with approaches from
cultural evolution Cultural evolution is an evolutionary theory of social change. It follows from the definition of culture as "information capable of affecting individuals' behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation a ...
and
evolutionary psychology Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evol ...
. In the book, Henrich explores how institutions and psychology jointly influence each other over time. More specifically, he argues that a series of
Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
edicts on marriage that began in the 4th century undermined the foundations of kin-based society and created the more analytical, individualistic thinking prevalent in western societies.


Summary

''The WEIRDest People in the World'' has been described as a work of
Big History Big History is an academic discipline which examines history from the Big Bang to the present. Big History resists specialization, and searches for universal patterns or trends. It examines long time frames using a multidisciplinary approac ...
and compared with works such as
Jared Diamond Jared Mason Diamond (born September 10, 1937) is an American geographer, historian, ornithologist, and author best known for his popular science books '' The Third Chimpanzee'' (1991); ''Guns, Germs, and Steel'' (1997, awarded a Pulitzer Priz ...
's ''
Guns, Germs, and Steel ''Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies'' (subtitled ''A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years'' in Britain) is a 1997 transdisciplinary non-fiction book by Jared Diamond. In 1998, it won the Pulitzer Prize for ge ...
'' (1997) and
Yuval Noah Harari Yuval Noah Harari ( he, יובל נח הררי ; born 1976) is an Israeli historian and professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of the popular science bestsellers '' Sapiens: A Brief History ...
's Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016). The first part, "The Evolution of Societies and Psychologies", describes WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) populations "in broad strokes", according to reviewer Pauline Grosjean. Henrich discusses the research of
Richard Nisbett __NOTOC__ Richard Eugene Nisbett (born June 1, 1941) is an American social psychologist and writer. He is the Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished Professor of social psychology and co-director of the Culture and Cognition program at the University ...
suggesting that people in WEIRD cultures think reductively with a focus on personal attributes and intentions, while Asians think holistically with a focus on relationships and situations. Non-Westerners will emphasize family connections and allegiances. Henrich also presents a large body of evidence that WEIRD people are more trusting of strangers and more likely to give blood than most humans. Westerners, according to reviewer Judith Shulevitz, "identify more as members of voluntary social groups—dentists, artists, Republicans, Democrats, supporters of a Green Party—than of extended clans.” The second part of the book, "The Origins of WEIRD People", provides a comparative political account of how societies have used religion to scale up from families to states. More specifically, the author draws on an array of qualitative and quantitative evidence to argue that religious beliefs, impersonal markets, urbanization and competition among voluntary associations like guilds, charter towns, universities and religious orders shifted people's psychology and social lives. Uniquely, the author both discusses how present-day institutions shape psychology and seats these processes in an account of the past. The third section, "New Institutions, New Psychologies", is about how the Catholic Church and its offshoot, Protestantism, shaped early institutions and psychology, paving the way (in the view of the author) for modern institutions. While accounts of modern history frequently argue that the Protestant Reformation created individualism and a belief in rule of law, Henrich argues that edicts by the Church that he calls the "Marriage and Family Program" (MFP) reduced clannishness, making Western Europeans more analytic and individualistic, leading to various intermediating institutions and trust in abstract rules; thus, as Henrich argues in the fourth section, "Birthing the Modern World", the Marriage and Family Program opened the doors for the Reformation, with Protestantism being simply a "booster shot" (in the author's words) for a process the Catholic Church set in motion. Henrich has been described as espousing "macro- cultural relativism" with the book.


Reception

In ''
The Week ''The Week'' is a weekly news magazine with editions in the United Kingdom and United States. The British publication was founded in 1995 and the American edition in 2001. An Australian edition was published from 2008 to 2012. A children's ed ...
'', the book was billed as "a work of dazzling ambition ... Henrich goes to great pains to back is argumentsup with a huge variety of 'data points' and statistics." Andrew Wilson of
The Gospel Coalition The Gospel Coalition, or TGC, is a union of Evangelicalism, evangelical and Reformed church, Reformed churches. History It was founded in 2005 by theologian D. A. Carson and pastor Tim Keller (pastor), Tim Keller. TGC describe their mission ...
dubbed the book "sweeping, polymathic, counterintuitive, and provocative. In a number of places, it looks like Henrich is shoehorning facts into his theory ... but he hits far more than he misses ... the splutters of incredulity you experience are more than made up for by the breadth and ''chutzpah'' of the narrative." Wilson compared it with the work of
N. T. Wright Nicholas Thomas Wright (born 1 December 1948), known as N. T. Wright or Tom Wright, is an English New Testament scholar, Pauline theologian and Anglican bishop. He was the bishop of Durham from 2003 to 2010. He then became research profe ...
. In '' Kirkus Reviews'' it was praised as a "fascinating, vigorously argued work that probes deeply into the way 'WEIRD people' think." Hilton Root, Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University, argued, "Henrich's genius and the source of his methodological originality reside in his application of contemporary social science to uncover universal laws, and to classify and categorize social reality in a context-free approach. ... The evidence strongly supports the importance of repressing 'kinship intensity' in trajectories toward modernity." However, the reviewer also argued that readers will not learn the larger-system context that also defined Europe, saying, "Only in passing does Henrich note that the Church did not apply the marriage rules on elite lineages with the same rigor as it did on peasant communities". Root also noted, "Tracing an outcome, e.g., the distinctive psychology of Western society, to an original cause, the Church ban on cousins wedding, is in itself WEIRD." The reviewer said that despite "jumping from the fifth century to the High Middle Ages ... the book makes a significant contribution to the study of what makes the West unique and will be a landmark of early twenty-first-century social science." Judith Shulevitz of ''
The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'' was skeptical of the claim that WEIRD and non-WEIRD people possess opposing cognitive styles, saying differences in subjects' personal experience may be the reason for differences in Triad Task responses. She also said the author's "indifference to individual and institutional intentions is guaranteed to drive historians nuts." However, Shulevitz argued, "The big-picture approach soars above the reigning paradigms in the study of European history ... Henrich offers a capacious new perspective that could facilitate the necessary work of sorting out what's irredeemable and what's invaluable in the singular, impressive, and wildly problematic legacy of Western domination." Not all reviews were positive. Wilson had also discussed the
Philip Jenkins Philip Jenkins (born April 3, 1952) is a professor of history at Baylor University in the United States, and co-director for Baylor's Program on Historical Studies of Religion in the Institute for Studies of Religion. He is also the Edwin Erle S ...
book ''Fertility and Faith'' (which makes a different argument), and described it as "more focused" than ''The WEIRDest People in the World''. A reviewer in ''
The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Eco ...
'' claimed not to be fully convinced of Henrich's thesis that the Roman church ushered in a more fluid society, saying that more likely "the medieval church was negotiating with, rather than Moulding, a social reality which was evolving fast as cities emerged." The reviewer also criticized the Western-style/kinship-intensive divide by noting that one family can contain a range of roles and attitudes. Pauline Grosjean, Professor in the School of Economics at
University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales (UNSW), also known as UNSW Sydney, is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the founding members of Group of Eight, a coalition of Australian research-intensiv ...
, noted in ''Science'' that marriage age has varied over time and that the colonies of the U.S. and Australia (places with abundant land) saw a sharp drop in marriage age among migrating 19th century Europeans; she described this as evidence against Henrich's suggestion that the Church's marriage prohibitions explain the Europeans' propensity for late marriage, though both the U.S. and Australia had sentiments of anti-Catholicism as both were more Protestant in their formation. Additionally, she said Henrich fails to address "the role that states may have played as competitors and regulators of the Church". Philosopher Daniel Dennett praised ''The WEIRDest People in the World'' as an "engagingly written, excellently organized and meticulously argued book ... One of the first lessons that must be learned from this important book is that the WEIRD mind is real; ... we must stop assuming that ''our'' ways are 'universal.'" However, Dennett claimed that on "why the church fathers enforced these prohibitions so tenaciously against resistance over the centuries, this is still a bit of a mystery. ... This book calls out for respectful but ruthless vetting".
Razib Khan Razib Khan (রাজীব খান ''Razyb Khan'') is a Bangladeshi-American writer in population genetics and consumer genomics. Life and education Khan was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh but moved to the United States at the age of five. His fa ...
wrote that "Henrich's engrossing narrative is filled with neat facts and insightful theories. The sequence of coincidences and correlations across history, psychology, and anthropology make for compelling reading." Khan said the author "makes a strong case that the Christian Church's MFP was the cause for the transformation of Western European society during the medieval period. ... But the second half of the book is arguably much more tendentious, as the author attempts to answer the great riddle of economic historians, the 'great divergence' between the West and the rest." Nicholas Guyatt of ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' anticipated that scholars would point out the uneven effects of the church's "marriage and family programme" across time and space; the Protestant church accepting cousin marriage more than its Catholic rival; and the increase in cousin marriage across many European societies in the 17th and 18th centuries. Guyatt also said the book insufficiently discusses the wrongs of the west, overly stereotypes non-WEIRD societies, lacks insight into the phenomenon of non-Europeans carrying ideas and practices; and emphasizes "the supposedly discrete nature of culture and hevirtues of 'weird' thinking" almost to the point of endorsing
social Darwinism Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in We ...
. In a Q&A about the book, however, Henrich said that it aims to fill the void often used by white supremacists (the absence in public discourse of scientific explanations for global diversity) with a deep "explanation for these patterns, and how off-the-mark those claiming genetics or 'superior' cultures are." Journalist Coleman Hughes has also referenced Henrich's book when criticizing
hereditarianism Hereditarianism is the doctrine or school of thought that heredity plays a significant role in determining human nature and character traits, such as intelligence and personality. Hereditarians believe in the power of genetics to explain human ch ...
and discussing the impact of culture on psychology.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:WEIRDest People in the World, The 2020 non-fiction books 21st-century history books Books about evolutionary psychology History books about Europe History books about the Middle Ages Farrar, Straus and Giroux books