{"id":15752,"date":"2014-10-05T10:40:59","date_gmt":"2014-10-05T09:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=15752"},"modified":"2014-10-05T17:51:12","modified_gmt":"2014-10-05T16:51:12","slug":"why-i-am-weird-and-you-probably-are-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=15752","title":{"rendered":"Why I am WEIRD &#8211; and you probably are too"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the behavioural sciences, there is a group of people &#8211; who are usually the subject of most of the research in these disciplines &#8211; who are dubbed WEIRD. \u00a0I guess I fall into this category and, when I spell out the acronym, you may conclude that you do too.<\/p>\n<p>In this context, WEIRD stands for:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>W<\/strong>estern &#8211; I&#8217;ve spent all my life living in Britain, a quintessentially western country, arguably one of the leaders of the so-called Western world.<\/li>\n<li><strong>E<\/strong>ducated &#8211; I am educated to degree level and continue to read widely and \u00a0attend short courses in order to expand my knowledge.<\/li>\n<li><strong>I<\/strong>ndustrialised &#8211; I live in an industrialised nation; indeed Britain was the first country in the world to industrialise.<\/li>\n<li><strong>R<\/strong>ich &#8211; By world standards, I am unquestionably rich in the income I receive and the standard of life I can afford.<\/li>\n<li><strong>D<\/strong>emocratic &#8211; I live in a democratic nation and I hold strongly to democratic values.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, what is the significance of me being in such a select category. As <a href=\"http:\/\/neuroanthropology.net\/2010\/07\/10\/we-agree-its-weird-but-is-it-weird-enough\/\">this article<\/a> argues,&#8221;where there is robust cross-cultural research, WEIRD subjects tend to be outliers on a range of measurable traits that do vary, including visual perception, sense of fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, and a host of other basic psychological traits&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, in world terms, I &#8211; and you too probably &#8211; am special, not in the sense of being superior but in the sense of being atypical. The importance of this conclusion is that, when looking at world events and developments, I &#8211; and I suspect you &#8211; have to remember that most people see the world differently and it&#8217;s essential that I allow for that and try to see the world through the eyes of people who are less WEIRD (the overwhelming majority numerically).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the behavioural sciences, there is a group of people &#8211; who are usually the subject of most of the research in these disciplines &#8211; who are dubbed WEIRD. \u00a0I guess I fall into this category and, when I spell out the acronym, you may conclude that you do too. In this context, WEIRD stands [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-life-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15752"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15766,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15752\/revisions\/15766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}