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The Use of the Term “People” in Research

Theresa Weidner

JUnQ, 6, 2, XXVII–XXVIII, 2016

A Commentary on “Most People are not WEIRD” by Joseph Henrich et al., Nature (2010)

Prof. Joseph Henrich is an anthropologist at the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, Cambridge, USA. His focus is on evolutionary approaches to psychology, decision-making and culture. Together with his colleagues Stephen J. Heine and Ara Norenzayan at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, CA, he was the first to point out that, in economics, psychology and cognitive science, conclusions are generally drawn from study participants with the same background: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD). In addition, primarily students form the majority of test subjects. Still, researchers – often unintentionally – claim that their findings apply to everybody.

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