WEIRD: Adventures of an acronym

07/01/20 • 12 min

Welcome to our 10th episode! Today’s show is another in our ‘mini minds’ series. We’ve been experimenting with different formats for our minis, as you may have noticed, but today we’ve got another in the classic blogpost style.

The topic is the acronym WEIRD—maybe you’ve heard it used. It stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. It’s become a shorthand for the idea that people in WEIRD societies are a bit unusual relative to the rest our species. The term was first introduced 10 years ago. On this episode I talk about its origins and the far-reaching influence it’s had since.

As with all episodes, be sure to check out the show notes for a smorgasbord of links and tidbits. There was a lot I had to leave on the cutting room floor with this one. But I swept some of it up and put it in the notes for anyone who’s interested.

Enjoy!

A text version of this "mini" is readable here.

Notes and links

2:00 – The birthplace of the acronym: ‘The weirdest people in the world?’

2:44 – A 2008 paper by Jeffrey Arnett that provided key support for the first part of Henrich et al.’s two-part argument.

3:35 – The visual illusion in question is the Müller-Lyer Illusion.

3:52 – These cultural differences in spatial conceptualization were first widely reported by Stephen Levinson and colleagues. See his book for the full story (or see a popular article of mine for a much shorter version).

4:33 – See the commentary by Meadon and Spurrett titled ‘It’s not just the subjects – there are too many WEIRD researchers.’

4:45 – See the commentary by Rozin titled ‘The weirdest people in the world are a harbinger of the future of the world.’ For an expansion of Rozin’s argument, with more examples, see my article on “global WEIRDing”.

5:45 – See David F. Lancy, The Anthropology of Childhood. (Note that only the second edition came out after the WEIRD article was published.) One part of child development that proves unexpectedly variable across cultures is learning to walk and other motor milestones.

6:30 – The intersection of smell and WEIRD-ness is discussed in a recent special issue—see the editorial introduction here. Long-standing ideas about the impoverished nature of human olfaction are discussed here.

6:48 – A study comparing olfactory sensitivity in Tsimane people and Germans.

6:55 – For discussion of the idea that odors are ineffable, see this article. The same article was also among the first to characterize the elaborated and consistently applied odor lexicon of a hunter-gatherer group. Other papers have since built on this work.

7:23 – See the paper titled ‘WEIRD bodies: Mismatch, medicine, and missing diversity.’ Foot flatness and flexibility in “conventionally shod” populations are discussed in

Enjoy!

A text version of this "mini" is readable here.

Notes and links

2:00 – The birthplace of the acronym: ‘The weirdest people in the world?’

2:44 – A 2008 paper by Jeffrey Arnett that provided key support for the first part of Henrich et al.’s two-part argument.

3:35 – The visual illusion in question is the Müller-Lyer Illusion.

4:33 – See the commentary by Meadon and Spurrett titled ‘It’s not just the subjects – there are too many WEIRD researchers.’

6:48 – A study comparing olfactory sensitivity in Tsimane people and Germans.

7:23 – See the paper titled ‘WEIRD bodies: Mismatch, medicine, and missing diversity.’ Foot flatness and flexibility in “conventionally shod” populations are discussed in

Previous Episode

How do chimps communicate?

Welcome back everyone! My guest on today’s show is Dr. Cat Hobaiter. Cat is a Lecturer at the University of St Andrews, where she’s part of research unit called the Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution. Cat spends a good chunk of her time, not in Scotland, however, but in Africa, where she conducts fieldwork on great apes. Her primary research site is in the Budongo Forest Reserve in Uganda. Along with her team there, she studies the social behavior of wild chimpanzees—in particular, how they communicate with each other.

Much of our conversation centers on how chimps communicate through gesture—through bodily theatrics like stomping, drumming, clapping, somersaulting, and pirouetting. We discuss when chimps use these gestures, how they acquire them, and the thorny issue of what they mean. We also talk about how the gestures of chimpanzees compare to the gestures of other primates—including those bonobos, gorillas, and human toddlers. Cat and I do make our way over to other topics, too—we touch on some work she and her colleagues have done on the so-called “cooperative eye” hypothesis. We talk about the day-to-day of what it’s like to do fieldwork on great apes. And we talk about how the chimps at Budongo are faring in these pandemic times.

Not many of us get the opportunity to observe our closest primate cousins in the wild. I’ve certainly never been so lucky. But maybe the next best thing is to hear from someone who has—particularly someone like Cat who has spent more than a decade watching chimps closely, puzzling out their propensities, and generally just figuring out what they’re up to.

I learned a lot from this conversation—and had fun to boot. I think you will do. So without any more preamble, here is my conversation with Dr. Cat Hobaiter!

A transcript of this interview is available here.

Notes and links

2:45 – Learn more about the Budongo Forest Reserve here.

7:45 – Chimpanzees are “neophobic”—afraid of new things, like humans. As a result, primatologists spend a lot of time habituating chimps to their presence.

14:15 – An article about Jane Goodall’s classic work on chimpanzees.

17:00 – An influential paper by Dr. Hobaiter and a colleague on the gestural repertoire of wild chimpanzees.

19:25 – Examples of many of the gestures we discuss are viewable at: http://greatapedictionary.ac.uk/video-resources/gesture-videos/

20:55 – A study in which Dr. Hobaiter and a colleague examine how many of the anatomically possible gestures chimpanzees actually make use of. (A small percentage, it turns out.)

25:15 – An important early paper on the intentional use of gesture in orangutans.

32:00 – A paper by Dr. Hobaiter and a colleague reviewing the debate on where chimp gestures come from. An influential earlier book in these debates.

44:25 – An article by Kirsty Graham and colleagues on the bonobo gestural repertoire. See also a more recent article featuring a direct comparison between bonobos and chimpanzees.

48:05 – Comparing a chimpanzee pant hoot and a human impersonation of a chimpanzee pant hoot.

52:40 – A recent article in Aeon about the controversy surrounding chimpanzee pointing.

58:45 – A paper by Dr. Hobaiter and colleagues on possible cases of pointing in the wild by chimpanzees.

1:01:45 – A recent

Next Episode

The shaman, the witch, and the folktale

Welcome back all! Today’s episode is a conversation with Dr. Manvir Singh. Manvir recently finished his PhD in Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, and will soon begin a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse. Manvir studies human culture. In particular, he focuses on certain cultural practices and products that spring up over and over again across the world’s societies—often in strikingly similar form. To explain these similarities, Manvir appeals to the human mind. He argues that our universal mental machinery plays a powerful role in molding our cultural traditions and products.

We start by diving deep into the topic of shamanism. We talk about why humans around the world have long put their trust in shamans—and why they still do today. We discuss why it is that, to secure that trust, shamans everywhere enter trance states, deny themselves worldly comforts, and undergo harrowing initiation rituals. We then move beyond shamanism. We talk about why we believe in witches and why we like stories about orphans and other sympathetic characters. We consider why people the world over know a lullaby when they hear one.

Part of what I admire about Manvir’s work is his balanced interest in both universal cultural patterns and fine-grained particulars. He’s interested in the forest, definitely, but also in the trees. And, trust me, there are a lot of fascinating trees here.

Hope you enjoy this one as much as I did. Without further ado, here’s my conversation with Dr. Manvir Singh.

A transcript of this interview is available here.

Notes and links

3:00 – An 1896 article by Frans Boaz titled, ‘The limitations of the comparative method in anthropology.’

6:15 – Read Dr. Singh’s article, ‘The cultural evolution of shamanism.’

20:45 – A popular article by Dr. Singh on money managers as modern shamans.

24:30 – On the question of whether magicians believe in their own powers, see Nicholas Humphrey’s essay ‘Behold the Man: Human Nature and Supernatural Belief’ in his book, The Mind Made Flesh.

27:45 – See James Scott’s book, Against the Grain.

30:10 – See Dr. Singh’s recently published study of costly prohibitions among Mentawai shamans.

34:45 – See here for Franz Boas’s account of a Kwakiutl shaman.

37:15 – For the etymology of the word “shaman,” see here and here.

38:00 – See Dr. Singh’s in-press paper on witches here.

44:30 – E. E. Evans-Pritchard’s book, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande.

49:45 – A popular article by Dr. Singh about the ongoing persecution of people perceived as witches.

52:50 – Read a Dr. Singh’s essay in Aeon on the sympathetic plot. See also his pre-print on the same topic.

59:40 – A study of the appeal of minimally counter-intuitive ideas.

1:04:10 – An article by Dr. Singh and colleagues on how songs serving similar functions (e.g., lullabies) tend to take similar forms around the world. Read a popular article write-up of the work here.

Manvir Singh’s end-of-show recommendations: