Summary Of Being WEIRD: How Culture Shapes The Mind

In the article, Being WEIRD: How Culture Shapes the Mind, the reader is presented with an interesting perspective on human cognition. Joe Henrich, an anthropology graduate, traveled to Peru, Tanzania, Indonesia, and other places to study small scale societies’ behavioral instincts on fairness. He wanted to compare his findings to that of Western culture to see if all cultures universally share the same perspective on what is fair. Instead of using traditional ethnography techniques, Henrich decided to use an unorthodox approach, which was using a statistical experiment, the ultimatum game. Individuals were given one hundred dollars and asked to give some of it out to another. Both parties could keep the money if each accept the amount. And to Henrich’s surprise, the results varied across all cultures. It was concluded that, one’s culture effects one’s cognition. (Watters, 493-494) …show more content…
It makes sense why a lot of people shunned the findings and viewed it as unethical. This discovery added another piece to the already incomplete pie chart of understanding human behavior. With this in mind, it brings into question the studies done by Western science, since they only do studies on the human psyche using their population. This is inaccurate because it doesn’t take into account different cultures and perspectives other than their own. Actually when observing other societies, Western societies, specifically American, are the only ones to behave and act like they do. Their reasoning, actions, responses, thinking, perception, is over exaggerate and makes them “WEIRD”. (Watters,