WEIRD, Chinese food at UBC, and the beginnings of behavioral economics
Episode 5 of In the Field with Michael Muthukrishna
Hi Lab,
Many of you have probably heard the term WEIRD people. By WEIRD people, I don't mean people who do strange things, I mean people from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies like Canada, the United States, Britain, or Australia.
Here's a question for you: What do WEIRD people, Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, and Chinese food have to do with one another? The answer lies in a basement food court at the entrance to the University of British Columbia's campus.
It was here that Kahneman and Tversky allegedly hatched their plans to study human rationality, creating the field of behavioral economics. And it was here that three UBC professors, Joe Henrich, Ara Norenzayan, and Steve Heine, started a conversation that led to what became known as the WEIRD People paper, which has, at the time I recorded this video, been cited over 10,000 times.
In their paper, Joe, Ara, and Steve made the compelling case that for decades, psychologists thought that by studying their students, they were learning about human behavior, but we were instead learning more than we really ought to or needed to know about first-year psychology undergrads in the universities of Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic countries. These undergrads weren’t representative of the rest of the population, let alone the 88% of the world who didn’t live in WEIRD countries.
This is the fifth installment of #IntheFieldwithMM, which was shot in a slightly unconventional spot: the basement of the University of British Columbia’s foodcourt, where the food is tasty, good value and, apparently perfect for researchers to cook up brilliant field-changing new ideas.
Best wishes,
Michael