Interview 80: Steven Heine on the Weirdest People in the World

Our guest today is Steven Heine, a Canadian professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia and a leader in the field of cultural psychology. In 2010, he, along with his colleagues Joseph Henrich and Ava Norenzayan wrote the ground-breaking paper ‘The WEIRDest’ people in the world?’ with WEIRD meaning Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic. The paper suggests that the view we have of the mind derived from the research of behavioural scientists is distorted due to the majority of studies in this field being done on only a small and not particularly representative sector of the human population. This will be the topic of our conversation today.