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Anyone familiar with psychology has probably heard a statement like this: A significant percentage of male & female undergraduates displayed X when prompted by Y. And typically the conclusion of the study is something like: So humans display X in the presence of Y. Taking the behavior of undergrads and extending it to all of humanity is an intriguing leap, right?
To be fair, for research purposes, undergrads are cheap and accessible. But, as noted by the blogger Headcase, such terms are better used to describe a hot date rather than good data.
Well, a group from the University of British Columbia recently published an enormous meta-analysis on the danger of assuming that all of humanity closely matches the behaviors of 20-something college students. They cite evidence that between 2003 and 2007 undergrads made up 80 percent of study subjects in six top psychology journals, and that 96 percent of all psychology samples come from countries that make up only 12 percent of the world’s population. They call this the WEIRD population—Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic—and say that they are the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans.
The researchers found huge variability between global populations along measures of motivation, self-perception, reasoning, heritability of IQ and even visual perception. For instance the Müller-Lyer visual illusion, which shows two lines of equal length where one is often perceived, at least by American undergrads, as longer than the other, is actually not an illusion at all for the San foragers of the Kalahari. The authors also note points of similarity like this one: in 37 populations, males tend to rank physical attractiveness of mates to be more important than do females.
The main plea from the researchers is that far too often these so-called WEIRD populations are actually the "outliers" and psychologists need to be less cavalier about labeling some behavior as human nature based on the desires, emotions and culture of a group of 19-year old co-eds.
—Christie Nicholson
(Editor's Note: To explore more of the data, the paper’s authors suggest this blog post: http://neuroanthropology.net/2010/07/10/we-agree-its-weird-but-is-it-weird-enough/ )
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13 Comments
Add Commentwhy the listening part of each podcast is the same....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've been waiting for someone to realize that university students are not representative of all of humankind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that it is good that psychologists are realizing that college students are not necessarily representative of everyone. On the other hand, this claim that these students are "WEIRD" and are outliers does not seem like very good science either. Where is the data to back up this claim? They say that there are large variations in some psychological measurements, but are the students always at one end of the spectrum? Also, they had to go pretty far to find a group of people who were not fooled by the line length illusion. Which group do you think was more representative of the world's population, the students or the San foragers of the Kalahari? My guess is that studies on these students are at least a good starting point for finding out whether a given psychological effect exists or not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks for the external link!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDuh..... Are you trying to tell me that someone had to conduct "[...] an enormous meta-analysis" in order to see the obvious? Scary.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat may APPEAR obvious may not end up being the case. It's good science when you subject even the obvious to experimental scrutiny. Also, it is good information to get an idea how close they actually come to the rest of the world in how many areas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrank Discussion - Obvious or not, that academic psychologists would commonly violate fundamental principals of population sampling to most conveniently gather data for statistical studies is condemning of academia.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs I recall, the classic example of the danger of sloppy sampling is the Chicago Tribune's publishing a headline declaring Dewey the winner of the 1948 presidential election, based on a post election telephone poll. While a telephone poll was convenient for pollsters, in 1948 most households that could afford phone service housed Republicans. Maybe the old fundamental lessons have been forgotten...
TTLG - I agree. Even if it's obvious that undergrads may not be representative of humans in general, the meta-analysis is a worthwhile addition to the overall findings. A truly representative sample of humanity implies that we even know how to come up with that. So yes, you have to start somewhere, even if it's the fellow students walking by you on campus.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTHIS IS WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON IN WESTERN COUNTRIES FOR A LONG TIME NOW THEY IN THE PEAK. THE FRIGHTENING ITS SPREADING INTO OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD. EXAMPLE OLANZIPINE GROUP OF PEOPLE, RISPERADOL GROUP OF PEOPLE, LARGACTYL GROUP OF PEOPLE, ARIPIPRAZOL GROUP OF PEOPLE AND SO ON SO MANY ANTI PSYCHOTIC DRUGS SO NOW THE MEDICAL SYSTEM GROUPING PEOPLE IN DIFFERENT CATEGORY. WHICH ONE IS YOURS.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is part of the reason why I left Psychology.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen again, it is correct that the majority of psychologists already realize that such a sampling bias exists--indeed, most undergraduate students at any decent institution are berated with this fact. Nonetheless, it is important for researchers to conduct rigorous analyses of information which we already believe to be true... otherwise we might as well just ditch the scientific method for more bloodletting.
Kind of like when the Republican biased press runs a public opinion poll at the Harvard Alumni Center and marvels at how the country is becoming more conservative.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKind of like when the republican biased press marvels at how conservative America is becoming, and you find out they ran their opinion poll over at the Harvard Alumni Center.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKind of like when the republican biased press marvels at how conservative America is becoming, and you find out they ran their opinion poll over at the Harvard Alumni Center.
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