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WEIRD psychology refers to the psychology that developed in Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic nations, as opposed to kin-based psychology. In The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous, Joseph Henrich, Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology and Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, provides us a volume of 489 pages plus appendices, notes, and bibliographies. The major contribution of this project is that it lets go of the old value-laden distinctions between primitive and developed, pathological and rational. In my view, it helps us recognize the various moral codes and modes of response that exist within all of us.
The central aim of Henrich's project is to understand the development of WEIRD psychology, first in Europe and then in the rest of the Western world, settled and influenced by Europeans. The most basic characteristic of WEIRD psychology is its stress on individualism, personal or internal motivation, and an abstract system of judgment regarding group and intergroup relations. In WEIRD psychology internal guilt is the predominant regulating negative affect. Guilt is provoked by one's evaluation of one's thoughts and actions: the person feels that “I am a bad person because I did a misdeed.”
A WEIRD perspective contrasts with a kin-based psychology where one's view of oneself and the world is based on the relationship with the extended family and community, including one's relative position as compared to others in the kin group. Among kin-group members, shame (how one appears to others in the group), rather than guilt, is a more central regulating negative affect. Other attributes of a kin-based psychology
include greater deference to authorities one trusts, such as elders in a community. In kin-based psychology there is a sharp demarcation between one's group and other groups: one stresses the welfare of one's group regardless of any negative