The Weirdest People in the World?

Joseph Henrich, Steven J. Heine, Ara Norenzayan · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · 2010 · anthropology · 10.1017/S0140525X0999152X · record henrich2010-weird
tag layer · index · concepts · authors · עברית

Where this record's text came from. faceted 2026-08 by reading the locally held text (pdftext); every evidence string verified as an exact substring of that text before merging. Claim type is 'critique' rather than 'existence': the target article's contribution is the case against generalising from WEIRD samples, though it rests on an existence claim about population variability ('Quotation withheld'). The phenomenon_evidence contains a curly apostrophe in 'world’s' as it appears in the extraction. The file is the target article only, with BBS peer commentary and the authors' response removed, so no relation could be recorded to commentators. Relations to Nowak et al. (2000), Fehr & Gachter (2002), Segall et al. (1966) and Arnett (2008) were deliberately left out: the paper reports and reinterprets these results, but no single verbatim sentence both names the prior work and states the paper's relation to it, and rule 7 forbids inferring a relation from a citation. The article uses PDF-mangled forms throughout (e.g. 'Mu¨ ller-Lyer', 'vis-a`-vis', scrambled clause order); the sentences quoted above were chosen from clean passages and each was substring-checked against the file. 2026-08-14, 2026-08-17 and 2026-08-25 schema-0.3 passes: every quote verified as an exact substring of the staged text and anchored at merge time; concept terms verified present; every edge endpoint an existing node. Update, 15 September 2026: EXCEPTION, measured with the merge gate's own predicate (Paper.locate): 4 quote(s) on this record are not found as one exact string in the current staged text - content_tags.statistics[1].evidence, content_tags.statistics[2].evidence, content_tags.statistics[4].evidence, content_tags.statistics[5].evidence. The sentence above does not hold for them as written. Where a row records why - the quote is grounded in another copy of the paper, joins two passages with an ellipsis, or differs from the staged text by extraction noise - that note stays on the row.

The quality of the text these quotes were cut from. diacritic-detached-from-its-letter (A NEW CLASS, AND NOT A LIGATURE FAULT): 7 words in a staged text of 141,434 characters carry a diacritic emitted as a SEPARATE SPACING CHARACTER AFTER the letter it belongs to, so 'Gaechter' is stored as 'Ga' + a spacing diaeresis + 'chter' and matches neither spelling. The em-dash ligature count on this record is ZERO and so is the '(cid:NNN)' count: this is a third kind of damage and is named rather than folded into either. THE QUOTES ON THIS RECORD ARE THE PAPER'S AND THE STAGED COPY IS THE DAMAGED ONE: 3 of its 68 live quotes are not exact substrings of this text, and 1 of those 3 were located in it by aligning the quote's WORD SEQUENCE under exactly this damage - the words are there, the characters inside them are not. Not repaired in place: editing the staged text moves every offset after the edit and re-hashes every anchor on the record. Measured at 113aae60fefc3eb1, re-measured unchanged at 54b63482778ddf56.

Some words in these quotes contain the wrong character. The PDF this text was extracted from substituted 3 characters inside a word — a currency sign or a stray accent where a letter pair belongs, as in signi¢cantly for significantly, or a single ligature glyph, as in conﬁdence. They are valid characters in the wrong place, so they survive every encoding check. The quotes keep them for the same reason as above, and a search of this page will not find the affected words.

2 quotes on this page break a word across a line. The PDF this text was extracted from hyphenated those words at the end of a printed line — adversar- ial, repre- sentations — and the extractor kept the hyphen and the space. The quotes keep them because a quote is reproduced exactly or it proves nothing: the break is the typesetter’s, not the author’s. A search of this page will not find the affected words.

This record’s own method is review, and the tags below follow from that. A review’s findings, quantities and statistics are things stated IN this paper, and some of them report results obtained elsewhere. No tag on this page names a different author. Measured across every review in this corpus, 81% of a review’s tags carry no citation at all — most of them are the review speaking. The corpus does not adjudicate the rest: read an unmarked tag as a claim this paper makes, not necessarily one it made first.

3 quotes on this page were cut from a different copy of this article. This project holds two extractions of this paper: the plain text every other quote here is anchored in, and the publisher’s own HTML edition, which we are not licensed to republish. They are verbatim in the second and cannot be found in the first — not because the tagging is wrong, but because the extraction damaged the passage: a page number dropped into the middle of a number, a formula moved out of its sentence, a ligature where two letters belong. The record names the copy for each one. The quote is the paper’s; the extraction is not.

How to read this page. The article itself is not reproduced here — this paper is not cleared for redistribution, so what follows is the tag layer alone. The evidence sentences are withheld with the article. The table at the foot lists every tag the record carries; each row names the facet it belongs to, and the whose words column says whether the tag records the paper's own wording or the tagger's sentence about the paper. Every tag links to each other paper in the corpus carrying it. The machine-readable edition of the same thing is the TEI file beside this one, where the tags live in standOff, and the article is at its publisher via the link below. When we have changed our mind. Some entries in the table begin with a word in capitals and the reason for it. EVIDENCE CORRECTED — the finding still stands, but we had quoted the wrong sentence from the paper, and the quotation has been replaced with the right one. RETRACTED — the entry itself was wrong; it stays on the page, marked, with the reason, rather than being deleted. WITHDRAWN AND REPLACED — the entry was wrong, and a corrected version of it appears in the entries below. Each mark carries its own reason, in brackets, because the reasons differ from one entry to the next. An entry we have WITHDRAWN is removed from this page and kept in the record, with its reason. A line reading Audit and a date is a later re-reading of the entry against its whole sentence: DOUBTFUL means it was kept, and the reason says what is loose about it. Quotation marks inside the tagger's sentence. Where a tag is the tagger's own sentence, a phrase in quotation marks inside it is borrowed from the paper — the tagger's wording around it is not. The paper's own sentence is the evidence quote for that row; on this page it is withheld with the article, and the article is at its publisher. Nothing inside quotation marks anywhere on this page is ours: if it is quoted, it is the paper's. Whose words a concept carries. A concept entry records a term the paper itself uses, so the term, the sense given for it, and its evidence are the paper's own words, quoted where the paper fixes them. This is the opposite of a sense entry in the tag table, which is the tagger's sentence about how the paper uses a term. Where a concept entry could not be grounded in the paper's words, the entry says so on its own row.

Other fields define these differently the same word, defined another way in another discipline
sample-size 5 fields · sampling 2 fields · external validity 2 fields · variance 2 fields

Tags on this paper

Every tag the record carries, each linking to every other paper in the corpus that carries it. A tag appears here whether or not its words occur in the article — the spans below are only the ones a sentence in this paper licenses. Of the 7 concept tags on this paper, 5 are grounded in a quoted sentence. 1 carry the tagger's gloss of what the term means in this paper, which is not something the article can license.

WEIRD samples cultural variation generalizability cross-cultural psychology standard subjects behavioral sciences WEIRD THE GAP BETWEEN A CLAIM'S SCOPE AND ITS EVIDENCE'S SCOPE IS THE PAPER'S FIRST SENTENCE: behavioral scientists ROUTINELY PUBLISH BROAD CLAIMS ABOUT HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY AND BEHAVIOR in the world's top journals BASED ON SAMPLES DRAWN ENTIRELY from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies. The claim is about the species; the evidence is about one corner of it TWO ALTERNATIVE IMPLICIT ASSUMPTIONS ARE NAMED, AND THE STANDARD POPULATION IS PUT IN SCARE QUOTES: researchers - OFTEN IMPLICITLY - ASSUME that EITHER there is little variation across human populations, OR that these STANDARD SUBJECTS are as representative of the species as any other population - and then: ARE THESE ASSUMPTIONS JUSTIFIED? Two different premises would license the same practice, and the paper separates them before testing either THE SAMPLE IS CHARACTERISED BY ITS POSITION IN THE DISTRIBUTION RATHER THAN BY ITS SIZE: the review suggests BOTH substantial variability across populations AND that these subjects are PARTICULARLY UNUSUAL compared with the rest of the species - FREQUENT OUTLIERS. Not merely narrow but atypical, and the two are separate findings THE VERDICT IS PUT IN SUPERLATIVE FORM AND SCOPED TO A PURPOSE: members of these societies, INCLUDING YOUNG CHILDREN, are AMONG THE LEAST REPRESENTATIVE POPULATIONS ONE COULD FIND FOR GENERALIZING ABOUT HUMANS. The qualifier is doing the work - they are not unrepresentative in general, but for one specific inferential use A PRESUMPTION OF UNIVERSALITY IS DENIED A PRIORI GROUNDS, AND THE DOMAINS ARE NAMED FIRST: many of the findings involve domains ASSOCIATED WITH FUNDAMENTAL ASPECTS of psychology - HENCE Quotation withheld based on sampling from A SINGLE SUBPOPULATION. Being fundamental is shown not to license being universal THE RECOMMENDATION IS A CHANGE OF MANNER RATHER THAN OF METHOD, AND THE SAMPLE IS DESCRIBED IN TWO ADJECTIVES: we need to be LESS CAVALIER in addressing questions of human nature on the basis of data drawn from this PARTICULARLY THIN, AND RATHER UNUSUAL, SLICE OF HUMANITY. `Thin` is about size and `unusual` about position, and the sentence needs both A FIELD'S BOUNDARY IS DRAWN BY FIAT FOR THE PAPER'S OWN PURPOSES: the subject is the Western, and MORE SPECIFICALLY AMERICAN, undergraduates who form THE BULK OF THE DATABASE in psychology, cognitive science and economics, AS WELL AS ALLIED FIELDS - HEREAFTER COLLECTIVELY LABELED THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES. The category the whole critique is addressed to is created in a parenthesis THE PAPER'S CENTRAL QUESTION IS PUT AS A QUESTION ABOUT WARRANT, NOT ABOUT FACT: given that scientific knowledge is LARGELY BASED ON FINDINGS FROM THIS SUBPOPULATION, we ask JUST HOW REPRESENTATIVE these typical subjects are in light of the available comparative database - Quotation withheld FOR THEIR FINDINGS? THE EVIDENCE NEEDED TO CHECK THE CLAIMS IS RARER THAN THE CLAIMS, AND THE COMPARISON IS MADE EXPLICITLY: large-scale comparative studies are HIGHLY INFORMATIVE but RATHER RARE, ESPECIALLY WHEN COMPARED TO THE FREQUENCY OF SPECIES-GENERALIZING CLAIMS - so when they were absent the authors fell back on assemblies of two- and three-population studies. The asymmetry between how often a scope is claimed and how often it is tested is stated as a ratio THE SAMPLING UNIVERSE IS MEASURED RATHER THAN CHARACTERISED, AND ITS COMPOSITION IS THEN EXPLAINED BY THE AUTHORS' OWN GEOGRAPHY: 68% of subjects came from the United States and A FULL 96% from Western industrialized countries - and THE MAKE-UP OF THESE SAMPLES APPEARS TO LARGELY REFLECT THE COUNTRY OF RESIDENCE OF THE AUTHORS. Who is studied is traced to who is doing the studying A CATEGORY IS NAMED FOR WHAT WAS ASSUMED ABOUT IT RATHER THAN FOR WHAT IT IS: the domains at issue are those which have LARGELY BEEN ASSUMED, AT LEAST UNTIL RECENTLY, TO BE **DE FACTO** PSYCHOLOGICAL UNIVERSALS. The label records a presumption and its expiry date, not a property A MODEL FAILS ON THE GAME AS PLAYED, IS MODIFIED UNTIL IT MATCHES, AND THE MODIFICATION BECOMES THE EXPLANATION: WHEN THEY MODELED THE ULTIMATUM GAME EXACTLY AS PLAYED, THEY DID NOT GET RESULTS MATCHING THE UNDERGRADUATE FINDINGS - HOWEVER, IF THEY ADDED REPUTATIONAL INFORMATION, the analysis predicted offers and rejections IN THE RANGE OF TYPICAL UNDERGRADUATE RESPONSES. The added ingredient was absent from the experiment it was fitted to AND THE CONCLUSION DRAWN FROM THE FITTED MODEL WAS ABOUT THE SPECIES: they concluded that the game REVEALS HUMANS' SPECIES-SPECIFIC EVOLVED CAPACITY for fair and punishing behavior - a claim about human nature resting on a model that had to be modified before it would reproduce one population's results THE WHOLE PICTURE IS SAID TO HAVE BEEN OVERTURNED IN ONE SENTENCE, AND BY COMPARISON RATHER THAN BY THEORY: Quotation withheld The correction came from widening the population, not from a better model THE ACRONYM IS DISCLAIMED IN A NUMBERED NOTE, WHICH IS THE PUREST CASE IN THE CORPUS OF A TERM DOING WORK ITS COINERS DENY INTENDING: we also use the term WEIRD throughout this paper TO REFER TO THE EXCEPTIONAL NATURE OF THIS SAMPLE, AND DO NOT INTEND ANY NEGATIVE CONNOTATIONS OR MORAL JUDGMENTS BY THE ACRONYM. They chose a word that means `strange`, put it in the title, and formally disavowed its ordinary meaning in a footnote cross-cultural population variability human universals external validity cultural psychology sampling representative comparative database species-level generality domains reviewed effect-size effect sizes hypothesis-testing hypothesis testing mean average of sample-size sample sizes variance review

Legend

relation to other work	`claim_relations`	how this paper stands to another: agrees, contradicts, extends, qualifies
claim type	`claim_type`	the shape of the claim: existence, mechanism, method, critique, prediction, null
concept edge	`concept_edges`	an asserted relation between two concepts, with the sentence asserting it
concept	`concepts`	an idea the paper works with, quoted where the paper uses it
content tag	`content_tags`	a finding, definition, quantity, statistic or variable named in the paper
limitation	`limitations`	what the paper says its evidence cannot support
mechanism	`mechanisms`	how the reported effect is said to come about
method	`method`	how the paper produced its evidence
phenomenon	`phenomenon`	the effect or regularity under study
sense	`senses`	a distinct use of a term, quoted where the paper fixes it
transfer	`transfers`	a method or concept carried in from another field

The paper

The full text is not reproduced here. This article is not cleared for redistribution, so the page carries the tag layer only. Its evidence sentences are withheld; the grounding status remains with each tag, and the article itself is at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X0999152X. The reading view exists for the papers whose licence permits it.

Every tag on this page

claim_relations 3 · claim_type 1 · concept_edges 2 · concepts 5 · content_tags 13 · limitations 8 · mechanisms 15 · method 1 · phenomenon 1 · senses 5 · transfers 1

Relations on this page carry a quotation for the claim. Where a relation was separately evidenced — and so tested against the vocabulary for its type — the row says so; none of 2 relations here carry that mark. The rest are the tagger’s reading of the sentence quoted beside them.

This record holds no controls. A layer is empty when the tagger recorded nothing in it — which is not the same as the paper having nothing to record.

facet	tag	field	conf.	whose words
claim_type	critique Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`claim_type`		the paper's words
phenomenon	WEIRD sample non-representativeness Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`phenomenon`		the paper's words
method	review Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: review	`method`		the paper's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: THE GAP BETWEEN A CLAIM'S SCOPE AND ITS EVIDENCE'S SCOPE IS THE PAPER'S FIRST SENTENCE: behavioral scientists ROUTINELY PUBLISH BROAD CLAIMS ABOUT HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY AND BEHAVIOR in the world's top journals BASED ON SAMPLES DRAWN ENTIRELY from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies. The claim is about the species; the evidence is about one corner of it	`mechanisms[0]`	0.95	the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: TWO ALTERNATIVE IMPLICIT ASSUMPTIONS ARE NAMED, AND THE STANDARD POPULATION IS PUT IN SCARE QUOTES: researchers - OFTEN IMPLICITLY - ASSUME that EITHER there is little variation across human populations, OR that these STANDARD SUBJECTS are as representative of the species as any other population - and then: ARE THESE ASSUMPTIONS JUSTIFIED? Two different premises would license the same practice, and the paper separates them before testing either	`mechanisms[1]`	0.95	the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: THE SAMPLE IS CHARACTERISED BY ITS POSITION IN THE DISTRIBUTION RATHER THAN BY ITS SIZE: the review suggests BOTH substantial variability across populations AND that these subjects are PARTICULARLY UNUSUAL compared with the rest of the species - FREQUENT OUTLIERS. Not merely narrow but atypical, and the two are separate findings	`mechanisms[2]`	0.95	the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: THE VERDICT IS PUT IN SUPERLATIVE FORM AND SCOPED TO A PURPOSE: members of these societies, INCLUDING YOUNG CHILDREN, are AMONG THE LEAST REPRESENTATIVE POPULATIONS ONE COULD FIND FOR GENERALIZING ABOUT HUMANS. The qualifier is doing the work - they are not unrepresentative in general, but for one specific inferential use	`mechanisms[3]`	0.95	the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: A PRESUMPTION OF UNIVERSALITY IS DENIED A PRIORI GROUNDS, AND THE DOMAINS ARE NAMED FIRST: many of the findings involve domains ASSOCIATED WITH FUNDAMENTAL ASPECTS of psychology - HENCE Quotation withheld based on sampling from A SINGLE SUBPOPULATION. Being fundamental is shown not to license being universal	`mechanisms[4]`	0.95	the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: THE RECOMMENDATION IS A CHANGE OF MANNER RATHER THAN OF METHOD, AND THE SAMPLE IS DESCRIBED IN TWO ADJECTIVES: we need to be LESS CAVALIER in addressing questions of human nature on the basis of data drawn from this PARTICULARLY THIN, AND RATHER UNUSUAL, SLICE OF HUMANITY. `Thin` is about size and `unusual` about position, and the sentence needs both	`mechanisms[5]`	0.95	the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. about this quote: This is the span the dangling repair extended earlier today - it had ended at "...allied fields (hereafter collectively labeled the", with the term missing, and the repair recovered “behavioral sciences” from the file. I had not read the paper at that point. Reading it now confirms the extension was exactly right: the category the entire critique is addressed to is created in that parenthesis. also in: A FIELD'S BOUNDARY IS DRAWN BY FIAT FOR THE PAPER'S OWN PURPOSES: the subject is the Western, and MORE SPECIFICALLY AMERICAN, undergraduates who form THE BULK OF THE DATABASE in psychology, cognitive science and economics, AS WELL AS ALLIED FIELDS - HEREAFTER COLLECTIVELY LABELED THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES. The category the whole critique is addressed to is created in a parenthesis	`mechanisms[6]`	0.95	the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: THE PAPER'S CENTRAL QUESTION IS PUT AS A QUESTION ABOUT WARRANT, NOT ABOUT FACT: given that scientific knowledge is LARGELY BASED ON FINDINGS FROM THIS SUBPOPULATION, we ask JUST HOW REPRESENTATIVE these typical subjects are in light of the available comparative database - Quotation withheld FOR THEIR FINDINGS?	`mechanisms[7]`	0.95	the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: THE EVIDENCE NEEDED TO CHECK THE CLAIMS IS RARER THAN THE CLAIMS, AND THE COMPARISON IS MADE EXPLICITLY: large-scale comparative studies are HIGHLY INFORMATIVE but RATHER RARE, ESPECIALLY WHEN COMPARED TO THE FREQUENCY OF SPECIES-GENERALIZING CLAIMS - so when they were absent the authors fell back on assemblies of two- and three-population studies. The asymmetry between how often a scope is claimed and how often it is tested is stated as a ratio	`mechanisms[8]`	0.95	the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: THE SAMPLING UNIVERSE IS MEASURED RATHER THAN CHARACTERISED, AND ITS COMPOSITION IS THEN EXPLAINED BY THE AUTHORS' OWN GEOGRAPHY: 68% of subjects came from the United States and A FULL 96% from Western industrialized countries - and THE MAKE-UP OF THESE SAMPLES APPEARS TO LARGELY REFLECT THE COUNTRY OF RESIDENCE OF THE AUTHORS. Who is studied is traced to who is doing the studying	`mechanisms[9]`	0.95	the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: A CATEGORY IS NAMED FOR WHAT WAS ASSUMED ABOUT IT RATHER THAN FOR WHAT IT IS: the domains at issue are those which have LARGELY BEEN ASSUMED, AT LEAST UNTIL RECENTLY, TO BE DE FACTO PSYCHOLOGICAL UNIVERSALS. The label records a presumption and its expiry date, not a property	`mechanisms[10]`	0.95	the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: A MODEL FAILS ON THE GAME AS PLAYED, IS MODIFIED UNTIL IT MATCHES, AND THE MODIFICATION BECOMES THE EXPLANATION: WHEN THEY MODELED THE ULTIMATUM GAME EXACTLY AS PLAYED, THEY DID NOT GET RESULTS MATCHING THE UNDERGRADUATE FINDINGS - HOWEVER, IF THEY ADDED REPUTATIONAL INFORMATION, the analysis predicted offers and rejections IN THE RANGE OF TYPICAL UNDERGRADUATE RESPONSES. The added ingredient was absent from the experiment it was fitted to	`mechanisms[11]`	0.95	the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. about this quote: RE-SLICED, and the qualifier is UNREACHABLE. The sentence continues "in situations with substantial reputational influence" - but the staged text reads "substantial reputainfluence. But, since the Ultimatum Game is tional typically played one-shot": 'reputational' is split, its halves fused and displaced across the following clause. Damage shape 5. I first tried ending at "substantial reputa", which the cut-word guard refused - correctly, since dodging a scramble by stopping inside a word is not a fix. also in: AND THE CONCLUSION DRAWN FROM THE FITTED MODEL WAS ABOUT THE SPECIES: they concluded that the game REVEALS HUMANS' SPECIES-SPECIFIC EVOLVED CAPACITY for fair and punishing behavior - a claim about human nature resting on a model that had to be modified before it would reproduce one population's results	`mechanisms[12]`	0.85	the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. about this quote: TRIMMED. The next sentence reads "Two unified projects (which we call Phase [RUNNING HEAD: Henrich et al.: The weirdest people in the world?] 1 and Phase 2) have deployed..." - the running head is spliced INSIDE the parenthesis, so the detail about 23 small-scale societies cannot be reached from a contiguous span. also in: THE WHOLE PICTURE IS SAID TO HAVE BEEN OVERTURNED IN ONE SENTENCE, AND BY COMPARISON RATHER THAN BY THEORY: Quotation withheld The correction came from widening the population, not from a better model	`mechanisms[13]`	0.85	the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: THE ACRONYM IS DISCLAIMED IN A NUMBERED NOTE, WHICH IS THE PUREST CASE IN THE CORPUS OF A TERM DOING WORK ITS COINERS DENY INTENDING: we also use the term WEIRD throughout this paper TO REFER TO THE EXCEPTIONAL NATURE OF THIS SAMPLE, AND DO NOT INTEND ANY NEGATIVE CONNOTATIONS OR MORAL JUDGMENTS BY THE ACRONYM. They chose a word that means `strange`, put it in the title, and formally disavowed its ordinary meaning in a footnote	`mechanisms[14]`	0.95	the tagger's words
limitations	The review can only assess representativeness against the small comparative database that currently exists. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. what this limits: the representativeness assessment itself: OUR EXAMINATION ... IS NECESSARILY RESTRICTED TO THE RATHER LIMITED DATABASE CURRENTLY AVAILABLE	`limitations[0]`		the tagger's words
limitations	Because comparative data are missing for most phenomena, the true extent of WEIRD unusualness cannot be measured. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. what this limits: the magnitude of the WEIRD problem: BECAUSE PROPER COMPARATIVE DATA ARE LACKING FOR MOST STUDIED PHENOMENA, WE CANNOT ACCURATELY EVALUATE THE FULL EXTENT OF HOW UNUSUAL WEIRD PEOPLE ARE - the bias cannot be sized for the reason it exists	`limitations[1]`		the tagger's words
limitations	The Americans-versus-other-Westerners contrast rests on assembled scattered sources rather than any systematic comparative programme. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. what this limits: the Americans-versus-other-Westerners contrast: WE COULD FIND NO SYSTEMATIC RESEARCH PROGRAM TO COMPARE AMERICANS WITH OTHER WESTERNERS, SO THE EVIDENCE PRESENTED IS ASSEMBLED FROM MANY SOURCES	`limitations[2]`		the tagger's words
limitations	The authors concede their coverage of relevant studies is incomplete. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. what this limits: the completeness of the survey: WE HAVE SURELY OVERLOOKED RELEVANT MATERIAL	`limitations[3]`		the tagger's words
limitations	The sampling skew is quantified against world population: 96% of samples come from countries holding 12% of humanity. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. what this limits: any behavioural-science finding as a claim about humans: 96% of samples come from countries with 12% of the world's population	`limitations[4]`	1.0	the tagger's words
limitations	The skew is stated to track where the authors live, not a sampling design. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. what this limits: the sample composition as a methodological choice: the paper attributes it to the authors' country of residence	`limitations[5]`	1.0	the tagger's words
limitations	Even within Western samples the method is stated to be far from representative, being mostly psychology undergraduates. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. what this limits: a Western sample as representative of Western populations: the paper states most are composed solely of psychology undergraduates	`limitations[6]`	1.0	the tagger's words
limitations	The over-representation is given as a per-person likelihood ratio of more than four thousand to one. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. what this limits: the participant pool as an approximation to humanity: an American undergraduate is stated to be over 4,000 times more likely to be a participant than someone outside the West	`limitations[7]`	1.0	the tagger's words
transfers	the Ultimatum and Dictator Games - anonymous one-shot allocations of real money, built as economic instruments - used as the cross-cultural measure of fairness and punishment in small-scale societies Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`transfers[0]`	0.9	the tagger's words
concepts	WEIRD samples Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: WEIRD samples	`concepts[0]`		the paper's words
concepts	generalizability Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: generalizability	`concepts[2]`		the paper's words
concepts	standard subjects Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: standard subjects	`concepts[4]`		the paper's words
concepts	behavioral sciences Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: behavioral sciences	`concepts[5]`		the paper's words
concepts	WEIRD Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: WEIRD	`concepts[6]`	0.95	the paper's words
senses	standard subjects - the population treated as a default stand-in for the species, on an assumption the paper says is usually left implicit Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`senses[0]`	1.0	the tagger's words
senses	representative - the property the paper tests and denies, concluding WEIRD subjects are among the least representative populations available Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`senses[1]`	1.0	the tagger's words
senses	WEIRD - an acronym for five society-level attributes, introduced to name the population the behavioural database actually rests on Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`senses[2]`	1.0	the tagger's words
senses	`WEIRD` - AN ACRONYM WHOSE EXPANSION IS ITS DEFINITION. `samples drawn entirely Quotation withheld` Five criteria, all of them checkable against a sample, carried inside the word. A reader who meets the term anywhere reconstructs the definition from the letters - the opposite of `exosome`, whose name asserts an origin nobody can check (see `thery2018`). Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`senses[3]`	0.95	the tagger's words
senses	THE COINERS DISCLAIM THEIR OWN PUN, IN AN ENDNOTE. `Quotation withheld` The acronym was built to spell an ordinary English word carrying a judgement, and the authors then spend a note saying the judgement is not meant. A name can be memorable BECAUSE of a connotation its coiners then have to repudiate - and the repudiation is filed where a citing author is least likely to carry it. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`senses[4]`	0.9	the tagger's words
claim_relations	contradicts → the assumption that standard (WEIRD) subjects represent the human species Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`claim_relations[0]`		the tagger's words
claim_relations	extends → Gergen 1973; Medin & Atran 2004; Norenzayan & Heine 2005; Rozin 2001; 2009; Sears 1986; Sue 1999 Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`claim_relations[1]`		the tagger's words
claim_relations	contradicts → radical interpretivism and cultural relativity (e.g., Gergen 1973) Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`claim_relations[2]`		the tagger's words
concept_edges	generalizability —contrasted-with→ WEIRD samples Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. strength of the relation: 1 Audit 2026-09-28: DOUBTFUL - read against its full span and kept, but WEIRD populations are among the least representative for generalizing; contrasted-with is loose. also in: generalizability · WEIRD samples	`concept_edges[0]`		the tagger's words
concept_edges	WEIRD —same-as→ standard subjects Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. strength of the relation: 0.8 · note: ONE POPULATION, TWO NAMES, AND THE NAMES DISAGREE ABOUT IT. 'standard subjects' is the field's own term, and the paper puts it in scare quotes; 'WEIRD' is the name the paper coins for the same people in order to deny that they are standard. Weight 0.8 - the co-reference is clear from the sentence, but the paper never writes 'X is also called Y'; it stages the two names against each other. also in: WEIRD · standard subjects	`concept_edges[1]`	0.85	the tagger's words
content_tags	2-3 — typical number compared when large studies were absent Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.quantities[1]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	broad human-psychology claims rest on WEIRD samples Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[0]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	there is substantial cross-population variability in results Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[1]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	WEIRD subjects are among the least representative populations Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[2]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	one subpopulation gives no grounds for claiming universality Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[3]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	species-level generality Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: species-level generality	`content_tags.variables[1]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	domains reviewed Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: domains reviewed	`content_tags.variables[3]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	WEIRD Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: WEIRD	`content_tags.definitions[0]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	behavioral sciences Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: behavioral sciences	`content_tags.definitions[1]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	standard subjects Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: standard subjects	`content_tags.definitions[2]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	comparative database Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: comparative database	`content_tags.definitions[3]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	mean Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: mean	`content_tags.statistics[3]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	variance Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: variance	`content_tags.statistics[5]`		the tagger's words

Interpretive choices

Tags that could not be placed in the text:

content_tags.statistics[1] — quotation withheld — the page has already reproduced as much of this paper as the rights budget allows
NOT MACHINE-VOUCHED: not-in-our-copy - The quote is in the original web page we fetched for this paper, but not in the text we tag against, which was extracted differently. Checked with ligatures, hyphens, spacing and punctuation set aside.
content_tags.statistics[2] — quotation withheld — the page has already reproduced as much of this paper as the rights budget allows
NOT MACHINE-VOUCHED: not-in-our-copy - The quote is in the original web page we fetched for this paper, but not in the text we tag against, which was extracted differently. Checked with ligatures, hyphens, spacing and punctuation set aside.
content_tags.statistics[4] — quotation withheld — the page has already reproduced as much of this paper as the rights budget allows
NOT MACHINE-VOUCHED: not-in-our-copy - The quote is in the original web page we fetched for this paper, but not in the text we tag against, which was extracted differently. Checked with ligatures, hyphens, spacing and punctuation set aside.

What was deliberately not tagged, and why, is recorded per paper by the tagger. Where a paper has no such record, this page says so rather than implying that nothing was declined.