Henrich Chapter 1

Henrich, "WEIRD Psychology," from The Weirdest People on Earth"

• Prelude: Your Brain has been modified by culture

• Example of how reading alters brains. "Literacy thus provides an example of how culture can change people biologically independent of any genetic differences."
• The ‘letterbox’ in your brain
• Literacy in Western Europe - a “cultural package” that includes abilities, but also attitudes toward education, technologies of literacy like printing.
• Note how a “culture of literacy” can cut across other cultures. Right hemisphere bias in facial recognition common to university students across cultures.
• 1517: Protestantism requires literacy. "sola scriptura"
• Showing causal relationship with "quasi-experimental" method "For every 100 km traveled from Wittenberg, percentage of Protestants dropped 10%. Like a "dosage". Also drove female literacy and public education.
• Also seen in literacy rates of Catholic and Prot missionaries to Africa: Protestant missions produce more literacy.
• Point of his book, “The WEIRDEST People in the World,”: WEIRD psychology is the result of a set of cultural adaptations promoted by the Catholic church.
• The movement of “sola scriptura” led to an explosion of literacy, which had numerous cultural effects, but the bigger story of how we became WEIRD starts with the Catholic Churches’ “Marriage and Family Plan” (Chapter 1).

• Chapter 1: WEIRD Psychology

• WEIRD: individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. Tends to look for universal categories, analytic. patient, takes plesure in hard work, sticks to imparial rules or principles, guilt vs. shame

• Major Claim: WEIRD psychology is a product of 600-1000 years of the Catholic Church's modification of our psychology through its "Marriage and Family Plan".

• Really, who are you?

• "Who Am I? task by culture
• Mapping the Individualism Complex vs. Kin-based institutions

• Might be obligated to avenge a murder,
• Prohibited from marrying a stranger / privileged to marry mother’s brother’s daughters.
• Responsible to carry out expensive ancestor rituals.
• Liable for family members crimes.
• Note the italicized moral terms. Moral culture changes with sociocentrism/individualism, as in Haidt.

• Contrast on p. 28. In the Industrial World "everyone is shopping for better relationships." Read specific contrasts.
• Hofstede's scale for measuring individualism/sociocentrism -
• Economic prosperity and Individualism may be in two way causal relationship.
• Note caveats to this research on p. 31. 1. As with physio-politics, not say one cultural package is objectively better than another. [Arguably, individualism and markets got us to the crisi of climate change.] 2. As with physio-politics, the categories mask numerous continuous differences.

• Cultivating the WEIRD self

• Research showing individualists cultivate "consistency across relationships" vs. kin-based "consistency within relationships”.
• Dispositionalism - seeing people's behavior as anchored impersonal traits that influence actions across contexts. The Fundamental Attribution Error (33) is a bias of WEIRD people, not a universal cognitive bias. WEIRD people suffer more from cognitive dissonance because of the type of consistency valued in WEIRD culture.
• Guilt vs. Shame
• Conformity - Solom Asch's experiments in which confederates give incorrect answers to test conformity. WEIRD cultures show lowest conformity. 37-38.

• Stop here for first half.

• Marshmallows Come to Those Who Wait

• "Discounting" as a measure of patience - "temporal discounting" widely researched through "choice" studies: "Would you rather X now or X+Y later?" Patience correlated with better socio-economic outcomes. Larger construct: "self-control" "self-regulation - Marshmallow studies. [1]
• Impersonal Honesty --

• UN Diplomats' parking violations research. Natural experiment on existing parking violations. Volume of tickets correlates with country's standing on "corruption index".
• Impersonal Honesty Game, like the Matrix research from Ariely, normed against probability of each die roll. Also correlates with corruption index. (results at p. 44). "quintessentially WEIRD experiment as there is no person affected by the dishonesty. In some cultures, you would be criticized for not taking advantage of the experiment to help your family.

• Universalism and Non-relationalism -- Research using the "Passengers Dilemma" -- does your friend have a right to expect you to lie to help him evade a parking fine? related results: willingness to give insider information, lie about medical exam to lower insurance rates, write a fake review of a friend's restaurant. Measures also importance of impartial rules
• Trusting Strangers - "Generalized Trust Question" (GTQ) survey instrument. measures impersonal trust vs. trust in relationship based networks. Norway: 70% Trinidad 4-5% Interesting variation in the US. Northern Italy 49% Sicily 26%. [Interesting discussion of forms of trust. Countries can report high trust on the GTQ, but it may not be impersonal trust. To get at that you have to ask specifically about trusting strangers.]
• Impersonal Prosociality roughly, "how we feel toward a person who is not tied into our social network" - correlated with national wealth, better government, less corruption, faster innovation.
• Obsessed with intentions -- Bob/Rob and Andy vignette research. The "Bob" condition involves intent. Barrett and Laurence research. Focus on intentional dishonesty correlates with WEIRD culture. Independent research on Japanese (less focused on intentions), suggests that other factors about Japan's culture affect outcomes.
• Analytic vs. Holistic thinking. Triad Task. (read 53) Abstract rule-based vs. Functional relationship. Analytics focus on rules, types, continuity. Example: Would you match "rabbit" with "carrot" or "cat"? Possible that even some of the Mapuche's "analytic" answers had holistic reasoning. pig/dog pig/husks. Also, attention and memory studies: East Asians remember background/context better that WEIRD people. Americans track the center of attention.
• WEIRD also have great endowment effect, overestimate our talents, self-enhance, enjoy making choices.
• Summary table on p. 56.

• Henrich's larger argument:

• The Catholic Church, through it "Marriage and Family Plan" (started around 600 a.d.), started the process that made us WEIRD. See Henrich, C14, "The Dark Matter of History" for summary of the book's argument. (In shared folder.)
• Movement from kin and clan based European culture, to "voluntary associations (guilds, charter towns, universities) drove the expansion of impersonal markets, and spurred the rapid growth of cities.