Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich And Democratic Research Articles

Perceived quality of parent-child interaction in parents of autistic children: relationship with parental education level.

Most autism research was conducted in Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) countries. This study is the first to examine factors that were associated with perceived quality of parent-child interaction in non-WEIRD parents of autistic children. Ninety-one Chinese parents of autistic children (82 females, 9 males) completed an online survey which involved two sections. The first section included demographics questions about the parent and the family, including age, gender, educational level, and household income. It also assessed parents' perceived quality of parent-child interaction and their autistic traits. The second section included demographics questions about their autistic child, including age and gender, and assessed autistic traits and behavioural problems. Parent's education level was associated with and the only predictor of their perceived quality of parent-child interaction. The higher educational level in parents the higher quality of parent-child interaction was perceived by the parents. These findings underscored the significance of parents' education level as a unique predictor of perceived parent-child interaction quality among Chinese parents of autistic children, providing implications to corresponding education and social policies in China and other non-WEIRD countries.

Culturally contextualized suicide prevention for international students: new opportunities for research and practice.

The rising incidence of suicide-related thoughts and behaviors among international students presents a significant public health challenge and growing concern among college campuses. Current intervention strategies often rely on Western-centric and colonized approaches developed and tested with primarily Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) samples. Exclusion and historical underrepresentation of ethnoracially minoritized groups in suicide prevention treatment trials create gaps in advancing our science because they often miss the cultural contextualization crucial for effective prevention and intervention in diverse groups from different countries of origin. To address the limitations of these Western-centric strategies, we explored existing prevention recommendations and approaches through the lens of an expanded version of the newly developed Protective Factors Framework, tailored for non-Western cultural perspectives. We propose significant opportunities for enhancing current practices and point to promising future directions. The primary areas for development include: (1) bolstering community empowerment and ownership, (2) refining mechanisms of change to encompass multicultural viewpoints, and (3) focusing on effective implementation and thorough evaluation for ongoing refinement. This methodology not only shows promise for enhancing international student suicide prevention but also offers insights for broader application in suicide prevention among other culturally diverse populations.

Research in Latin America from a decolonial perspective: Challenges of producing socially situated knowledge.

The developmental science literature predominantly originates from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) countries. This bias perpetuates colonial power imbalances and marginalizes non-WEIRD societies' knowledge. This special issue addresses this gap by focusing on Latin America, emphasizing the region's diverse socioeconomic, cultural, and political contexts. This commentary contextualizes research in Latin America, and then presents and discusses the articles. Finally, it presents some of the challenges researchers in Latin America face.

Trust is key: Determinants of false beliefs about climate change in eight countries

Science has established the human-caused nature of climate change, yet the prevalence of climate-related misinformation persists, undermining public understanding and impeding collective action. Strikingly, existing research on belief in misinformation about climate change has disproportionately focused on WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) countries. To move beyond this, our online survey (N = 8541) includes high-income countries in North America (US), Western Europe (France, Germany, UK) and East Asia (Japan), as well as an upper-middle income country in South America (Brazil) and lower-middle income countries in South Asia (India and Pakistan). By examining the interplay of news media usage, information sources, and trust in these sources, we advance our understanding of how these factors influence belief in climate change-related misinformation in diverse socio-cultural contexts. Across countries, we found that the strongest determinants of belief in misinformation about climate change were identifying as right-wing (compared with left-wing), consuming less offline news, having less trust in scientists, environmental activists, as well as international organizations, and having more trust in politicians, celebrities, and energy companies. Overall, trust in sources of information about climate change and demographic variables were much stronger predictors of belief in misinformation about climate change than reported news consumption (online, offline or on social media). These findings suggest that trust is key to understanding belief in false information about climate change.

The motivating effect of monetary over psychological incentives is stronger in WEIRD cultures

Motivating effortful behaviour is a problem employers, governments and nonprofits face globally. However, most studies on motivation are done in Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD) cultures. We compared how hard people in six countries worked in response to monetary incentives versus psychological motivators, such as competing with or helping others. The advantage money had over psychological interventions was larger in the United States and the United Kingdom than in China, India, Mexico and South Africa (N = 8,133). In our last study, we randomly assigned cultural frames through language in bilingual Facebook users in India (N = 2,065). Money increased effort over a psychological treatment by 27% in Hindi and 52% in English. These findings contradict the standard economic intuition that people from poorer countries should be more driven by money. Instead, they suggest that the market mentality of exchanging time and effort for material benefits is most prominent in WEIRD cultures.

Cultural Correlates of Adult Attachment Dimensions: Comparing the US and Turkey

Mainstream attachment literature has chiefly employed WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) samples, yet cross-cultural studies investigating attachment dynamics outside of Western world corroborated universality of the basic tenets of attachment theory and normativity of attachment security. Importantly, these studies revealed country-level differences in the prevalence of insecure attachment tendencies. Of note, this line of work bears the limitation of reducing culture to country and relying on the individualism versus collectivism dichotomy. The present study offers a novel examination of individual-level links between distinct cultural mindsets and distinct attachment orientations. We investigated two community samples ( NTurkey = 368, NUSA = 350) from two diverse cultural contexts by employing an assorted battery of cultural value measures, including both overt and covert measures of cultural indicators. Results revealed distinct relationships between attachment anxiety and the interdependent mindset and attachment avoidance and the independent mindset in both cultural contexts. Findings are discussed in light of cultural implications.

Examining the reading comprehension pedagogical practices developed by ESL teachers in Namibian primary schools

Many studies addressing methods to improve reading comprehension in English Language Learners (ELLs) primarily focus on WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) samples. Unfortunately, ESL teachers in global South regions like Namibia have often been overlooked in this research. This study aims to bridge this gap by examining the self-developed strategies employed by Grade 7 ESL teachers to enhance reading comprehension in primary schools within Namibia’s Oshikoto region. This research adopts an exploratory case study approach with an interpretivist orientation. The selection of five Grade 7 ESL teachers is done purposefully, and data collection involves stimulated recall interviews and classroom observations. To analyse the collected data, an inductive thematic analysis is applied. The findings shed light on the practices of experienced teachers, revealing that they continue to utilise pedagogical methods acquired during their initial teacher education, including previewing, reading aloud, fluency training, and vocabulary development. However, these methods do not appear to guarantee improved reading comprehension for learners. Importantly, these teachers did not adapt their practices to suit their specific cultural and linguistic contexts and the needs of their learners. The study’s findings hold implications for the initial teacher education curriculum as they emphasise the importance of incorporating reflective practice to foster personal practical knowledge for teaching reading in non-Western settings.

Emotion Granularity, Regulation, and Their Implications in Health: Broadening the Scope from a Cultural and Developmental Perspective

The ability to represent emotional experiences in a precise fashion with language, termed emotional granularity, is related to a number of beneficial outcomes. However, the emotion granularity construct and operationalization are rooted in the lens of so-called Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) societies that focus on emotions as a mental-state phenomena. Using evidence from multiple non-WEIRD societies, we illustrate that people's everyday vernacular often emphasizes bodily over, or in addition to, mental states. This suggests that granularity focused only on mental state language may limit our ability to operationalize this construct in a culturally valid manner. To overcome this limitation, we propose capturing “experiential” granularity and a concept model on how it may link to regulation and health.

Neuropsychiatric symptoms after moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury in Vietnam: Assessment, prevalence, and impact on caregivers.

Neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPSs) after moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) have been well documented in WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) populations. In non-WEIRD populations, such as Vietnam, however, patients with TBI clinically remain uninvestigated with potential neuropsychiatric disorders, limiting on-time critical interventions. This study aims to (1) adapt the Vietnamese Neuropsychiatric Inventory (V-NPI), (2) examine NPSs after moderate-to-severe TBI and (3) evaluate their impact on caregiver burden and well-being in Vietnam. Caregivers of seventy-five patients with TBI completed the V-NPI, and other behavior, mood, and caregiver burden scales. Our findings demonstrated good internal consistency, convergent validity, and structural validity of the V-NPI. Caregivers reported that 78.7% of patients with TBI had at least three symptoms and 16.0% had more than seven. Behavioral and mood symptoms were more prevalent (ranging from 44.00% to 82.67% and from 46.67% to 66.67%, respectively) and severe in the TBI group. Importantly, NPSs in patients with TBI uniquely predicted 55.95% and 33.98% of caregiver burden and psychological well-being, respectively. This study reveals the first evidence for the presence and severity of NPSs after TBI in Vietnam, highlighting an urgent need for greater awareness and clinical assessment of these symptoms in clinical practice. The adapted V-NPI can serve as a useful tool to facilitate such assessments and interventions. In addition, given the significant impact of NPS on caregiver burden and well-being, psychosocial support for caregivers should be established.

An evaluation of the psychometric properties of the strengths and difficulties scale in Turkey: Implications for other non‐WEIRD countries

AbstractThe Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a very widely used scale in which parents, teachers or the child rate various aspects of the child's well‐being. It is widely used in the Western world and is translated into 80+ languages. It is also used in countries that do not classify as WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic). However, unlike WEIRD countries, some studies indicate that the psychometric properties of the SDQ when used in non‐WEIRD countries are questionable. Therefore, we gave the SDQ to the mothers and teachers of 310 3‐ to 5‐year‐olds in urban centres of Turkey and examined its psychometric properties. Turkey is not a WEIRD country because it is not Western, although the participants in our study were well educated, living in an industrialized area, rich relative to others in Turkey (although poor relative to Westerners) and democratic. As such, it is not drastically different from WEIRD countries and our question was whether even relatively small deviations from standard WEIRD criteria could result in questionable psychometric properties for the SDQ.

Applying recommendation system for developing programming competencies in children from a non-weird context

The information society is part of current life, and algorithmic thinking and programming are relevant for everybody regardless of educational background. Today’s world needs professionals with computing competencies from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic Societies) and non-WEIRD contexts. Traditional programming languages include syntax barriers that complicate their overall adoption and usefulness for people from a non-WEIRD context. To solve it, block-based programming languages like Scratch permit the development of programming competencies without syntax restrictions in online environments. This article presents empirical evidence of the positive impact of Scratch with the CARAMBA recommendation system for lessons and exercises proposals based on collaborative filtering of personalized learning from students’ experiences. Previous experiences demonstrated that students require assistance in successfully defining sub-competencies and exercises to develop programming competencies by applying Scratch. This work shows the application of Scratch and CARAMBA in a non-WEIRD school context for developing programming competencies. Obtained results show that developing exercises with Scratch and CARAMBA motivated students’ autonomy, and as well, the programming learning application increased exam scores in all the analyzed grades. Those results encourage us to continue using Scratch and CARAMBA for developing programming competencies in similar non-WEIRD contexts.

Animals evoking fear in the Cradle of Humankind: snakes, scorpions, and large carnivores

Theories explain the presence of fears and specific phobias elicited by animals in contemporary WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) populations by their evolutionary past in Africa. Nevertheless, empirical data about fears of animals in the Cradle of Humankind are still fragmentary. To fill this gap, we examined which local animals are perceived as the most frightening by Somali people, who inhabit a markedly similar environment and the region where humans have evolved. We asked 236 raters to rank 42 stimuli according to their elicited fear. The stimuli were standardized pictures of species representing the local fauna. The results showed that the most frightening animals were snakes, scorpions, the centipede, and large carnivores (cheetahs and hyenas). These were followed up by lizards and spiders. Unlike in Europe, spiders represent less salient stimuli than scorpions for Somali respondents in this study. This conforms to the hypothesis suggesting that fear of spiders was extended or redirected from other chelicerates.

Colorful candy, teen vibes and cool memes: prevalence and content of Instagram posts featuring ultra-processed products targeted at adolescents

PurposeThe current research aimed to examine the prevalence of Instagram posts featuring ultra-processed products targeted at adolescents in Uruguay and hence investigate the frequency of such posts among a vulnerable consumer segment in a country that cannot be classified as WEIRD (i.e. Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic).Design/methodology/approachThe study relied on a cross-sectional content analysis. A total of 2,014 Instagram posts promoting ultraprocessed products or brands commercializing such products, generated by 118 Instagram accounts between August 15th, 2020, and February 15th, 2021, were analyzed. Nine indicators of food marketing targeted at adolescents were selected to identify posts targeted at this age segment. Inductive coding was used to describe the content of the posts. Descriptive statistics and generalized linear models were used to analyze the data.FindingsIn total, 17.6% of the posts were identified as targeted at adolescents. Graphic design and adolescent language were the most prevalent indicators of marketing targeted at adolescents, followed by explicit references to adolescents or young adults and memes. Posts identified as targeted at adolescents mainly promoted snacks and discretionary foods. Differences in the content of posts identified as targeted and not targeted at adolescents were observed.Research limitations/implicationsThe analysis was restricted to one social media platform in one country during a limited period of time, which limits the generalizability of the findings to other media platforms, samples and settings.Social implicationsResults stress the need to implement digital food marketing regulations to reduce exposure of adolescents to the deleterious effects of stemming from marketing of unhealthy foods and provide empirical evidence to inform their development.Originality/valueThe study breaks new ground by analyzing the prevalence and exploring the characteristics and content of Instagram posts promoting ultra-processed products to adolescents in an under-researched geographic area of the world.

How Threat Shapes Attention and Memory in the Himba, a Remote People of Namibia

Threatening stimuli capture our attention more rapidly than benign stimuli, and threatening experiences lead to longer lasting and more vivid episodic memories. The common interpretation of these findings is that humans share an evolved fear response that enables prioritized processing of threats, providing a survival advantage. This response is assumed to be universal; however, these findings have been documented almost entirely in WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) populations. Here, we address this gap by examining threat detection and fear memories in a remote African culture, the Himba. We found that threats captured attention more rapidly than benign stimuli, and that fear memories, despite differing in content, were shaped by threat in a similar manner to that reported in WEIRD populations.

Epistemic Exclusion and Invisibility in Sex Research: Revisiting the WEIRD Dichotomy

ABSTRACT In our article titled, “How WEIRD and androcentric is sex research? Global inequities in study populations,” we showed that the published sex research is dominated by male and WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) samples. The commentary on our article by Sakaluk and Daniel critiqued the dichotomous coding of WEIRD and non-WEIRD contexts. After acknowledging how the androcentric bias finding was disregarded in the whole discussion, we used this critique as an opportunity to expand our argument about the epistemic exclusion and invisibility of researchers and samples from the majority of the world in sex research. We think having this debate between two groups of researchers located at Western universities is at odds with our intention. Thus, we invited researchers from Global South countries to join the debate via a short survey, and expanded our recommendations from the original paper with the help of these voices.

Conceptualizing Human-Nature Relationships: Implications of Human Exceptionalist Thinking for Sustainability and Conservation.

The ways in which people conceptualize the human-nature relationship have significant implications for proenvironmental values and attitudes, sustainable behavior, and environmental policy measures. Human exceptionalism (HE) is one such conceptual framework, involving the belief that humans and human societies exist independently of the ecosystems in which they are embedded, promoting a sharp ontological boundary between humans and the rest of the natural world. In this paper, we introduce HE in more depth, exploring the impact of HE on perceptions of the human-nature relationship, the role of culture in HE, and speculating on the origins of HE. We consider potential implications for environmental decision-making, conservation and environmental science, and promoting proenvironmental behavior. We present empirical evidence on the pervasiveness and consequences of HE in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) populations, and potential interventions. Finally, we close with implications of human-exceptionalist thinking on other sustainability-related fields, including conservation practices, nature management, climate change adaptation, and environmental science. Understanding the cognitive and social drivers of this disconnect is vital on a planet now dominated by environmental change, as not only are humans increasingly impacted by natural disasters, but the choices they make can have ever more dire consequences for the sustainability of ecosystems.

Not WEIRD at all! Towards More Pluralistic Economies and Sustainable Livelihoods

Sustainability discourses are dominated by Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD) perspectives. Critics call for remedies to patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism; and for work that is inclusive of women, non-market influences, and epistemologies of the global South. Focusing on women's work, this paper interrogates the epistemic and practical injustices of geography and gender. The empirical domain is a middle-income economy, offering insight from the space between WEIRD and subsistence extremes. 15 case studies of Malay female micro-entrepreneurs draw on interview, observational and secondary data, tracing the effects of market formalization on market actors. Despite subordinate social status, the women provide reliable income streams for their families. However, their livelihoods are threatened by rapidly formalizing markets. Market formalization crowds out the small and diverse in favor of the large and multinational. To address that problem, a pro-social systems view is required, based on pluralistic conceptions of economies and markets. Drawing on Gibson-Graham's diverse economies perspective we derive 12 propositions supporting sustainable livelihoods. Sustainable livelihoods support quality of life and wellbeing, are embedded in less damaging and more inclusive (vs patriarchal, colonial and capitalistic) provisioning systems, in turn embedded in epistemologies that are reflexively conscious of power dynamics and the WEIRD hegemony. In line with the paradoxes and tensions in sustainability thinking we call for pluralism: Conscious acceptance of all economic approaches, formal and informal, state and non-state, global and local, capitalist and planned; with an emphasis on physical, emotional and social well-being, self-determination, diversity, health, and happiness for the many rather than wealth for the few.

Face to face interactions in chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and human (Homo sapiens) mother-infant dyads.

Human mothers interact with their infants in different ways. In Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD) societies, face-to-face interactions and mutual gazes are especially frequent, yet little is known about their developmental trajectories and if they differ from those of other primates. Using a cross-species developmental approach, we compared mother-infant interactions in 10 dyads of urban humans from a WEIRD society (Homo sapiens) and 10 dyads of captive zoo-based chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), when infants were one, six and 12 months old. Results showed that face-to-face interactions with mutual gaze events were common in both groups throughout the infant's first year of life. The developmental trajectories of maternal and infants' looks partially differed between species, but mutual gaze events were overall longer in humans than in chimpanzees. Mutual gazes were also more frequent in humans, peaking at six months in humans, while increasing with age in chimpanzees. The duration and frequency of mutual gazes varied across contexts in both groups, with mutual gazes being longer during caring/grooming and feeding contexts. These findings confirm that some aspects of early socio-cognitive development are shared by humans and other primates, and highlight the importance of combining developmental and cross-species approaches to better understand the evolutionary roots of parenting behaviour. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Face2face: advancing the science of social interaction'.

Auraltypical acoustics? A critical review of key standards and practices

The concept of aural diversity was born out of awareness that there is a deeply embedded and intertwined, singular model of hearing at the core of the preponderance of acoustic standards and guidance, and hence practice (Drever 2015, 2017). This is exemplified with the prescription of the 'otologically normal' hearer derived equal loudness contours (ISO 226:2003), giving form to ubiquitous A-weighted decibel - the 'otologically normal' characterising the hearing of 18 to 25-year-olds, arguably the healthiest sub-group of society. This paper will critically review this assumption through reviewing the current set of acoustics standards in the UK. Crucially it will probe at some of the methods underpinning historic and foundational studies and concepts that are referenced in current standards, such as the reliance on WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies) samples to stand in for the whole of the human population. (Henrich, Heine, Norenzayan 2010; Cobianchi & Rosas Pérez, 2021). Through interviews with acoustic professionals, the paper will then look at how this is carried through into practice and finally, discuss the consequences of slavishly following these models, which studies have shown (Drever 2017), results in distress, negative impact on health and well-being and societal exclusion for some.

A WEIRD Theory? On the Prevalence of Western Folk Theory of Social Change in the West and Asia

According to Western folk theory of social change, modernization of societies causes them to become less warm but more competent over time. Since WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) societies are often at the forefront of modernization (with some exceptions, most notably China), these societies may also be most prone to internalizing this folk theory. In this research, we test this idea by making a comparison across a sample group of Western and Asian societies, using a self-report measure of perceived societal warmth and competence: The Social Change Perception Scale (SCPS). We found the scale to be metrically invariant among university students from a set of Western and Asian countries (United States, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, The Philippines, China, and Malaysia). In all seven countries, people expected their society to become more competent over time. In most countries, people also expected their society to become colder over time, although this tendency was slight and insignificant among New Zealanders and Americans. The perceived social cooling tended to be more prevalent in Asian countries rather than in Western countries. The countries’ degrees of WEIRDness, as reflected in their country-level indicators of individualism, education, industrialization, wealth, and democracy, did not adequately account for the observed variation. Though there is still much work to be done in applying the SCPS to broader samples and contexts, this study provides a starting point for measuring and understanding how people experience the social implications of modernization around the world.