Some writers use a percentage from a survey of the United States to represent the whole world. On February 3, 2014 I blogged about Busting a myth – that 75% of people in the world fear public speaking. There is a two-inch thick book from 2019 by Joseph Henrich titled The WEIRDEST People in the World: How the west became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous. Chapter 1 on WEIRD Psychology opens with the following:
“Who are you?
Perhaps you are WEIRD, raised in a society that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. If so, you’re likely rather psychologically peculiar. Unlike much of the world today, and most people who have ever lived, we WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self- obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. We focus on ourselves – our attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations – over our relationships and social roles. We aim to be ‘ourselves’ across contexts and see inconsistencies in others as hypocrisy rather than flexibility. Like everyone else, we are inclined to go along with our peers and authority figures; but, we are less willing to conform to others when this conflicts with our own beliefs, observations, and preferences. We see ourselves as unique beings, not as nodes in a social network that stretches out through space and back in time. When acting, we prefer a sense of control and the feeling of making our own choices.
When reasoning, WEIRD people tend to look for universal categories and rules with which to organize the world, and mentally project straight lines to understand patterns and anticipate trends. We simplify complex phenomena by breaking them down into discrete constituents and assigning properties or abstract categories to these components – whether by imagining types of particles, pathogens, or personalities. We often miss the relationships between the parts or the similarities between phenomena that don’t fit nicely into our categories. That is, we know a lot about individual trees but often miss the forest.
WEIRD people are also particularly patient and often hardworking. Through potent self-regulation, we can defer gratification – in financial rewards, pleasure, and security – well into the future in exchange for discomfort and uncertainty in the present. In fact, WEIRD people sometimes take pleasure in hard work and find the experience purifying.
Paradoxically, and despite our strong individualism and self-obsession, WEIRD people tend to stick to impartial rules or principles and can be quite trusting, honest, fair, and cooperative toward strangers or anonymous others. In fact, relative to most populations, we WEIRD people show relatively less favoritism toward our friends, families, co-ethnics, and local communities than other populations do. We think nepotism is wrong, and fetishize abstract principles over context, practicality, relationships, and expediency.
Emotionally, WEIRD people are often racked by guilt as they fail to live up to their culturally inspired, but largely self-imposed, standards and aspirations. In most non-WEIRD societies, shame – not guilt – dominates people’s lives. People experience shame when they, their relatives, or even their friends fail to live up to the standards imposed on them by their communities. Non-WEIRD populations might, for example, ‘lose face’ in front of the judging eyes of others when their daughter elopes with someone outside their social network. Meanwhile, WEIRD people might feel guilty for taking a nap instead of hitting the gym even though this isn’t an obligation and no one will know. Guilt depends on one’s own standards and self-evaluation, while shame depends on societal standards and public judgement.
These are just a few examples, the tip of that psychological iceberg I mentioned, which includes aspects of perception, memory, attention, reasoning, motivation, decision-making, and moral judgment. But, the questions I hope to answer in this book are: How did WEIRD populations become so psychologically peculiar? Why are they different?”
We can use two surveys of social fears to see how different the U. S. is from other countries. On June 23, 2009 I blogged about how You are not alone: fear of public speaking affects one in five Americans. That post discussed an article from 2008 by A. M. Ruscio titled Social Fears and Social Phobias in the United States: Results from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. And on August 15, 2012 I blogged about how Surveys show that public speaking isn’t feared by the majority of adults in nine developed and 11 developing countries. That post discussed another article from 2010 by Dan J. Stein et al titled Subtyping Social Anxiety Disorder in Developed and Developing Countries. The nine developed countries are Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United States. The eleven developing countries are Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Colombia, India, Lebanon, Mexico, Nigeria, Romania, South Africa, and Ukraine.
The horizontal bar chart shown above compares a dozen fears for the United States with those from eleven developing countries, which are considerably lower. The most common fear, public speaking/performance (aka stage fright) is 21.2% for the U.S. but only 9.4% for eleven developing countries.
Another horizontal bar chart shown above compares the ratios of percentages for those fears. The largest ratio of 4.62 is for Going to Parties, followed by four with a ratio of about 3.24. Then there is a ratio of 2.77 for Entering an Occupied Room. Public Speaking/Performance is one of another five fears with a ratio of around 2.23. Finally, there is a ratio of 1.78 for Using Public Bathroom.
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