We are not the World

[Earl Grey]

Stumbled upon this interesting article: We Aren’t the World - Pacific Standard

TLDR;

[...] He knew that a vast amount of scholarly literature in the social sciences—particularly in economics and psychology—relied on the ultimatum game and similar experiments. At the heart of most of that research was the implicit assumption that the results revealed evolved psychological traits common to all humans, never mind that the test subjects were nearly always from the industrialized West. Henrich realized that if the Machiguenga results stood up, and if similar differences could be measured across other populations, this assumption of universality would have to be challenged.

[...] Henrich’s work with the ultimatum game was an example of a small but growing countertrend in the social sciences, one in which researchers look straight at the question of how deeply culture shapes human cognition. His new colleagues in the psychology department, Heine and Norenzayan, were also part of this trend. Heine focused on the different ways people in Western and Eastern cultures perceived the world, reasoned, and understood themselves in relationship to others. Norenzayan’s research focused on the ways religious belief influenced bonding and behavior. The three began to compile examples of cross-cultural research that, like Henrich’s work with the Machiguenga, challenged long-held assumptions of human psychological universality.

 

[Maou]

I didn't real all of it, but they are essentially saying the basis of human psychology is based on western peoples, and goes on to explain how different races and cultures evolved different psychological traites and suggests that because of that, universal human behavior isn't a thing, and you might act/behave differently based on your culture/race and religion.

I mean, he isn't wrong.

 

[agentwashington]

I've heard of something like this in the past. Scientific consensus can change, and sometimes should change. A lot of people pointed out that experiments like the Stanford experiment only showed the results of a small number of people. It's tempting to generalize based off the data that we get, but more data needs to be gathered. It seems that the work is in progress. I do think that textbooks should change to reflect this shift, though.

 

[Mole]

We are certainly not the world.

For millennia the world has had a spoken culture, lived in traditional tribes in immediate emotions contact with each other, usually in vocal contact, and then the Phoenicians created the phonetic alphabet, the Ancient Greeks created logic, and the West became enlightened with evidence and reason, created universal literacy and the modern world.

The modern literate world and the traditional spoken world are two different worlds, creating two different kinds of people.

And now on top of the spoken and literate worlds we are creating the electronic world, creating a new kind of person, more like the traditional tribes than the literate individual.

Ironically, it is now fashionable for the spoken cultures to hate the literate Western Enlightenment, while the electronic world is overtaking both.

 

[Bacopa]

This is a good find. I think psychology is way too individualistic because of the western bias.

 

[Mole]

This is a good find. I think psychology is way too individualistic because of the western bias.

The Western Enlightenment not only led to public health and vaccines, but also to public literacy and the literate individual.

The weirdest thing we can do in a traditional tribe is to read a book, silently, alone. Yet it is the practice of reading books silently and alone that creates the literate individual.

The traditional tribe regards reading books silently alone with suspicion, and come to hate the culture literacy creates.

This is also true of the new electronic tribes raised on TV and the net, they don't read books for pleasure, prefer not to read books, and disrespect the literate individual.