As I write this, the HN title is "Why Americans Are the Weirdest People in the World"... it's not justified because this article is more that Americans are the "weirdest", why is still very speculative at this point. Considering we just came to grip with it, in academic terms, and still have only the fuzziest pictures as to the details, "why" is a bit premature.
I also find it intriguing that even as we finally identify that cultures may in fact be profoundly different and not merely superficially different, which calls the entire liberal idea of fundamental American evil into question by cutting away the most foundational assumptions it is based on, the author still can't resist leaping to the assumption that Americans are somehow wrong. It's most clear in this bit: Is my thinking so strange that I have little hope of understanding people from other cultures? Can I mold my own psyche or the psyches of my children to be less WEIRD and more able to think like the rest of the world? If I did, would I be happier?
I'll accept the last question as at least a bit of humility, but, well, before one goes socially engineering one's own child, shouldn't we first explore this matter more deeply and ask whether it's even a good idea? And the idea casually underlies several other bits of prose, too. It will take long to purge this poisonous idea from academia, but perhaps now we can finally start.
This is deeply revolutionary stuff if academia actually comes to accept this (to the point that I would not be surprised this becomes one of those "the old guard must die before this can be accepted" sorts of things), and even as the article sort of brushes on this topic, I don't think it really captures just how foundational the assumptions this destroys are. It's not merely a sort of accepted doctrine of modern academic liberalism, the fundamental lack of diversity in human cognition is one of the most foundational foundations, sunk so deep that you can't even notice it unless you go looking.
One of the worries I think would come up is the fear that this might turn into a new judgment of which cultures are "better", but this article does, thankfully, already get into the right of thinking about that question, which is, better for what? Dropping a comfortable western person into a primitive, tribal environment and watching their maladaptive behaviors has long been a topic for movies, for instance (even if it is usually followed up by Mighty Whitey storyline [1]... follow that link if the phrasing concerns you, the racist overtones of that phrase are quite deliberate and derogatory of what it is describing). Cultures are different for reasons, and "better" requires context... but, correspondingly, so therefore does "worse".
Not only does it blow by the character limit, it goes right off the end of my screen. These problems are fixable. I'm not advocating a complete overhaul, but how many times have you mistapped / misclicked on a vote button and not been able to reverse it? How come there is still no way to collapse threads? Very basic things.
I'm not sure what's causing it, but while looking through the HTML I noticed each comment line gets different markup. The first line gets a font tag and the subsequent lines get a p tag. Very strange.
In truth, social scientists (bar the usual suspects, aka economists) have long observed that Westerners in general, and Americans in particular, think and behave quite differently from people from other cultures.
You can trace the observation, for instance, all the way back to the beginnings of sociology, psychology, social psychology and anthropology in the late 19th/early 20th -- and you could certainly trace it to colonial times if you accept vague and annecdotical observations from people living at the time as further evidence.
There's also a steady stream of comparatitive studies on the topic since the 1970s, as highlighted by another poster.
Liberalism in its modern guise only took hold in the American academic circles in the 1960s, although it's a very fuzzy event of course. Prior to that the idea that there were fundamental differences wasn't toxic, but I fully agree that it was also often taken too far. I consider the current stance a massive overreaction, but there was something to react to. I don't think the facts have ever justified current academic orthodoxy and rather fully expect it to be looked back on as something as bizarre as pholistigon, but as we sit here in the middle of it, it's much harder to see how bizarre it is.
So to me, the revolutionary bit has nothing to do with "new facts"... the revolutionary bit is if it established to the point where current orthodoxy can no longer resist it.
And in the meantime, as someone who truly enjoys science in its real form as a permanent, ongoing intellectual revolution rather than a servant of the orthodoxy, the staggering vista of quantitative research this opens up into the diversity (the real diversity, not the political kind) of the human experience is incredibly exciting. There's rich veins of knowledge to be mined here with modern technology and techniques.
And I'd make that meta-reply in general to a lot of the other comments... yes, frankly the general gist of this has long been obvious to anyone with an independent mind who takes a look out at the world around us, but if it's so obvious, why has the scientific orthodoxy not matched that? The surprise expressed in this article is real. And I mean that as a true question for thought and examination, not mere snark. It's a rich question, about science, about how science works, about history, all sorts of things. Books could be written on it, and probably will be.
Better or worse cultures: this is sensitive in the west but I do not see why it should be taboo. First it can be disconnected from racism, because one can equally respect all human beings while still having a preference for some cultural values that we cannot honestly declare equally present in all cultures. An example coming to mind is the place of women.
Then we can find some lines along which cultures might differ and be said better or worse. For example adaptability is likely an important feature. The physical health of people is also different, and there I think American have much to improve.
I don't know why I feel I need to stop here. It reminds me about pg's essay about things that can't be said. Sadly I'm not bold enough to walk through this minefield.
Great - the HN title is no longer the above one, but now "We Aren't the World (2013)"... a non-descriptive one giving no idea of what the article is about, and furthermore assuming that "we" are all Americans, or at least one of the W.E.I.R.D. cultures described in the article.
I hate to complain, especially when I really do love this site and the community, but if someone is going to edit a headline, at least make it an improvement.
I also find it intriguing that even as we finally identify that cultures may in fact be profoundly different and not merely superficially different, which calls the entire liberal idea of fundamental American evil into question by cutting away the most foundational assumptions it is based on, the author still can't resist leaping to the assumption that Americans are somehow wrong. It's most clear in this bit: Is my thinking so strange that I have little hope of understanding people from other cultures? Can I mold my own psyche or the psyches of my children to be less WEIRD and more able to think like the rest of the world? If I did, would I be happier?
I'll accept the last question as at least a bit of humility, but, well, before one goes socially engineering one's own child, shouldn't we first explore this matter more deeply and ask whether it's even a good idea? And the idea casually underlies several other bits of prose, too. It will take long to purge this poisonous idea from academia, but perhaps now we can finally start.
This is deeply revolutionary stuff if academia actually comes to accept this (to the point that I would not be surprised this becomes one of those "the old guard must die before this can be accepted" sorts of things), and even as the article sort of brushes on this topic, I don't think it really captures just how foundational the assumptions this destroys are. It's not merely a sort of accepted doctrine of modern academic liberalism, the fundamental lack of diversity in human cognition is one of the most foundational foundations, sunk so deep that you can't even notice it unless you go looking.
One of the worries I think would come up is the fear that this might turn into a new judgment of which cultures are "better", but this article does, thankfully, already get into the right of thinking about that question, which is, better for what? Dropping a comfortable western person into a primitive, tribal environment and watching their maladaptive behaviors has long been a topic for movies, for instance (even if it is usually followed up by Mighty Whitey storyline [1]... follow that link if the phrasing concerns you, the racist overtones of that phrase are quite deliberate and derogatory of what it is describing). Cultures are different for reasons, and "better" requires context... but, correspondingly, so therefore does "worse".
[1]: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MightyWhitey