The challenge of diversity in psychology: WEIRD research, implications, and improvements

Abstract

Psychology suffers from the problem of studying a narrow database: most research is conducted on samples that are from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies. The problem is both that many psychological phenomena appear differently across cultures, and that WEIRD samples are psychological outliers on many dimensions. I will review some evidence that reveals the extent of cultural diversity in various psychological processes, and will discuss some implications. In particular, the WEIRD people problem intersects with a recent concern of a replicability crisis in psychology because failed replications conducted in other cultures might indicate boundary conditions for an effect, rather than a problem with internal validity. Moreover, as one solution to the replicability crisis is to collect larger sample sizes this has the unwanted consequence of further incentivizing the reliance on cheap convenience samples, which would exacerbate the WEIRD people problem. Implications and recommendations will be discussed.