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Facts are shaking the foundations of psychology?

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Bright Idea From Nicolas Geeraert at RealClearScience:

However, this isn’t the case. Psychologists have long disproportionately relied on undergraduate students to carry out their studies, simply because they are readily available to researchers at universities. More dramatically still, more than 90% of participants in psychological studies come from countries that are Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic (W.E.I.R.D). Clearly, these countries are neither a random sample nor representative for the human population.

Clearly culture has a massive effect on how we view ourselves and how we are perceived by others – we are only just scratching the surface. The field, now known as “cross-cultural psychology”, is increasingly being taught at universities across the world. The question is to what extent it will inform psychology as a discipline going forward – some see it as an extra dimension of it while others view it as an integral and central part of theory making. More.

Cross-cultural psychology will probably still be nonsense but different nonsense. Maybe that’s an advance.

See also: Introductory psych textbooks offer a “highly misleading” view of intelligence, say researchers

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