The weirdest people in the world
The weirdest people in the world
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DOI：
10.1021/acsnano.2c12846
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发表时间：
1973-03
期刊：
影响因子：
17.1
通讯作者：
C. B. Colby
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
C. B. Colby
行为科学家经常在世界顶级期刊上发表有关人类心理学、认知和行为的广泛主张，其样本完全来自西方社会受过高等教育的群体。研究人员（通常是含蓄地）认为，要么人类群体之间几乎没有差异，要么这些“标准受试者”与其他物种一样代表了该物种。这些假设合理吗？在这里，我们对整个人类行为科学的比较数据库的审查表明，不同人群的实验结果存在很大差异，而且标准受试者与其他物种相比特别不寻常——常见的异常值。审查的领域包括视觉感知、公平、合作、空间推理、分类和推理归纳、道德推理、推理风格（整体与分析）、自我概念和相关动机以及智商的遗传性。比较结果表明，西方、受过教育、工业化、富裕和民主社会的成员，包括幼儿，是人们可以找到的对人类进行概括的最具代表性的人群之一。其中许多发现涉及与心理学、动机或行为的基本方面相关的领域——因此，没有明显的先验依据来声称基于单个亚群的抽样，特定的行为现象是普遍的。总体而言，这些经验模式表明，我们在基于从这个特别薄弱且相当不寻常的人性部分中提取的数据来解决人性问题时需要不那么漫不经心。最后，我们提出了在结构上重新组织行为科学的方法，以最好地应对这些科学挑战。奇怪的人 2008 年 11 月 28 日 Draft 08 在新几内亚的热带森林中，埃托罗人相信，男孩要想成年，就必须摄入长辈的精液。这是通过仪式化的成年仪式来实现的，该仪式要求所有年轻男性入会者为高级成员口交（Herdt 1984，Kelley 1980）。相比之下，附近的卡卢利坚持认为，男性入会仪式只有通过入会者的肛门而不是嘴巴输送精液才能正确完成。埃托罗人痛斥这些卡卢利做法，认为它们令人厌恶。为了成为这些社会中的男人并最终娶妻，每个男孩都必须经历这些仪式。这种对“异国”社会的深入研究，历史上是人类学的领域，对于理解人类行为变异极其重要。然而，本文并不是关于这些民族的。这是关于另一个异国群体的：来自西方、受过教育、工业化、富裕和民主（奇怪）社会的人们。特别是，它是关于西方，更具体地说是美国的本科生，他们构成了心理学、认知科学和经济学以及相关领域的实验分支的实验数据库的主体（我们将这些领域的集合称为“行为科学”）。鉴于有关人类心理学的科学知识主要基于该人群的研究结果，我们要问的是，根据当前可用的比较数据库，这些典型主题的代表性如何。研究人员断言或隐含地假设他们的实验结果具有物种层面的普遍性，其合理性如何？这些奇怪的人代表我们这个物种吗？在这里，我们回顾了有关怪异人群与其他人群的比较的证据。为了实现这一目标，我们通过首先寻找涉及重要心理或行为变量的大规模比较实验的研究来构建我们的实证回顾。尽管此类比较研究信息丰富，但相当罕见，特别是与物种概括主张的频率相比。当缺乏此类研究时，我们依赖于比较 2 或 3 个人群的大量研究，以及相关的荟萃分析（如果有）。当然，研究人员并不隐含地假设他们所研究的一切都具有普遍性。一些现象事先预计会因个人乃至社会的不同而有所不同，例如个人价值观、情感表达和人格特质。事实上，对这些主题进行大量研究的目的是找出人们和社会在这些问题上彼此之间的差异。许多大型研究项目都试图从价值观（G. Hofstede 2001，Inglehart，Basanez 和 Moreno 1998，S. H. Schwartz 和 Bilsky 1990）、人格特质（例如 McCrae、Terraciano 和 Project 2005、Schmitt、Allik、McCrae、Benet-Martinez 等）等维度来描绘世界。 2007），以及幸福水平（例如，Diener, Diener, & Diener 1995）。本综述不涉及那些通过个体差异测量评估的现象，这些现象的研究指导假设是个体差异
Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology, cognition, and behavior in the world’s top journals based on samples drawn entirely from highly educated segments of Western 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. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the human behavioral sciences suggests both that there is substantial variability in experimental results across population and that standard subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species—frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles (holistic vs. analytic), self‐concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The comparative findings suggest that members of Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, or behavior – hence, there are no obvious a priori grounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of human nature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re‐organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these scientific challenges. Weird People 28 Nov 2008 Draft 08 In the tropical forests of New Guinea the Etoro believe that for a boy to achieve manhood he must ingest the semen of his elders. This is accomplished through ritualized rites of passage that require all young male initiates to fellate a senior member (Herdt 1984, Kelley 1980). In contrast, the nearby Kaluli maintain that male initiation is only properly done by ritually delivering the semen through the initiate’s anus, not his mouth. The Etoro revile these Kaluli practices, finding them disgusting. To become a man in these societies, and eventually take a wife, every boy must undergo these ritual initiations. Such in‐depth studies of “exotic” societies, historically the province of anthropology, are extremely important for understanding human behavioral variation. However, this paper is not about these peoples. It’s about another exotic group: people from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. In particular, it’s about the Western, and more specifically American, undergraduates who form the bulk of the experimental database in the experimental branches of psychology, cognitive science, and economics, as well as allied fields (we label this aggregate of fields the “behavioral sciences”). Given that scientific knowledge about human psychology is largely based on findings from this population, we ask how representative these typical subjects are in light of the currently available comparative database. How justified are researchers, in asserting, or—as if often the case—of implicitly assuming, a species‐level generality of their experimental findings? Are these WEIRD people representative of our species? Here, we review the evidence regarding how WEIRD people compare with those from other populations. To pursue this we constructed our empirical review by looking first for studies that involved large‐scale comparative experimentation of important psychological or behavioral variables. Although such comparative studies are highly informative, they are rather rare, especially when compared to the frequency of species‐generalizing claims. When such studies were absent we have relied on large assembles of studies comparing 2 or 3 populations, and, when available, relevant meta‐analyses. Of course, researchers do not implicitly assume universality with everything they study. Some phenomena are a priori expected to vary across individuals, and by extension, societies, such as personal values, emotional expressiveness, and personality traits. Indeed, the goal of much research on such topics is to identify the ways that people and societies differ from one another on these. A number of large‐scale research projects have sought to map out the world on dimensions such as values (G. Hofstede 2001, Inglehart, Basanez, & Moreno 1998, S. H. Schwartz & Bilsky 1990), personality traits, (e.g., McCrae, Terraciano, & Project 2005, Schmitt, Allik, McCrae, Benet‐Martinez, & al. 2007), and levels of happiness, (e.g., Diener, Diener, & Diener 1995). The present review does not address those phenomena assessed by individual difference measures for which the guiding assumption in the research is variability among