Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan (2010). Most people are not WEIRD.

Research in psychology tends to assume that everyone shares the most fundamental cognitive and affective processes and that findings from one population apply to other populations. Most psychological research is conducted on Western (W), educated (E), industrialized (I), rich (R) and democratic (D) (WEIRD) participants.

Evidence suggests that there are cultural differences in cognitive and affective processes. Populations vary in the extent to which they display certain biases, patterns and preferences.

There are four methods to overcome this problem:

1. Editors and reviewers should push researcher to support generalizations with evidence.
2. Researchers should get credit for comparing diverse and inconvenient subject pools.
3. Granting agencies should prioritize cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural research.
4. Researchers must strive to evaluate how their findings apply to other populations.