1.

Representativeness of the WEIRD community

a. The people being observed within this study is fairly restricted, which made it
necessary for them to organize their groups in ways they could get the most
information.
i. First compared modern industrialized societies with people from small-
scale societies.
ii. They then contrasted people from western societies with people from
non-western Industrialized cities.
iii. Then, they compared Americans to other western Societies.
iv. Finally, the compared university educated Americans to non-university
educated Americans.
2. Industrialized societies versus small scale societies
a. They tested the visual perception of these groups with a line illusion. They
mostly compared undergraduate Americans to other groups like one from
Johannesburg.
i. Discovered that visual perceptions were definitely influenced by frequent
local visual environment.
ii. This proves that if something as small as visual perceptions can be
changed by environment, what about all the psychological things that are
effected as well?
b. They tested the difference of fairness and economic decision making within the
two different groups. They had them play a game that tests whether they would
accept an offer at a low or high scale.
i. Discovered that small scale societies made low offers and rarely rejected.
3. Similarities between the industrialized and small-scale societies were observed
a. When discussing the illusion mentioned above, there were some differences
between what the people saw, but in general the differences and perceptions
varied little.
b. The ability to perceive different colors come from small scale societies.
c. While studying emotional expression, they discovered there are basic facial
expressions that blanket the human species as a whole, but this was sampled
from small scale societies.
d. Work done in many countries around the world experimented the ability people
have to pass false belief tasks. This ability was seen in all populations observed.
i. Age at which the subjects passed the test varies between 4 and 9
e. Research was done on the cognitive functions of social relationships between
many different cultures.
i. Immigrants tended to confuse people more within the same category
such as family vs friends, but the categories vary across many countries
and their cultures.
4. Comparisons were done between western and non-western societies
a. People from various societies played a game that allowed them to inflict
punishment on those playing. The ability to punish people dramatically changed
the outcome of how much cooperation people had while playing
i. Westerners seemed to participate in more negative deviations
b. They were curious how different countries self-concept and positive self-views
were opposing.
ii. Self-serving biases seem to be much higher in wester cultures than
in non-wester cultures as well as positive self-views, but there are
exceptions.
iii. In some east Asian countries they tend to be more self-serving than
Americans.