How WEIRD is Cognitive Archaeology? Engaging with the Challenge of Cultural Variation and Sample Diversity

Abstract

In their landmark 2010 paper, “The weirdest people in the world?”, Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan outlined a serious methodological problem for the psychological and behavioural sciences. Most of the studies produced in the field use people from Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) societies, yet inferences are often drawn to the species as a whole. In drawing such inferences, researchers implicitly assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that WEIRD populations are generally representative of the species. Yet neither of these assumptions is justified. In many psychological and behavioural domains, cultural variation begets cognitive variation, and WEIRD samples are recurrently shown to be outliers. In the years since the article was published, attention has focused on the implications this has for research on extant human populations. Here we extend those implications to the study of ancient H. sapiens, their hominin forebears, and cousin lineages. We assess a range of characteristic arguments and key studies in the cognitive archaeology literature, identifying issues stemming from the problem of sample diversity. We then look at how worrying the problem is, and consider some conditions under which inferences to ancient populations via cognitive models might be provisionally justified.

Cultural evolution: A review of theoretical challenges

“…Second, the advent of CES practised in broad spatiotemporal frames includes projects that consolidate historical and cross-cultural data in large databases (Slingerland et al, 2020), efforts in evolutionary archaeology and cognitive archaeology (Killin & Pain, 2023), and in cultural macroevolution more generally (Gray & Watts, 2017). While surveyed members of the Cultural Evolution Society regard the definition of 'culture' as a vexed but important problem (see Driscoll, 2017;Ramsey & De Block, 2015), a corollary often goes unnoticed, viz.…”

Past materials, past minds: The philosophy of cognitive paleoanthropology

“…This requires complex inferential strategies demanding philosophical analysis. These include the character of the inferences used in the field (Currie & Killin, 2019;Pain, 2021), the role of "bridge" (or 'midrange') theory (Botha, 2016;Currie, 2018), the methods of inference by minimally required capacities (Killin & Pain, 2023a;Wynn, 1979Wynn, , 2002 or by causal associations (Currie & Killin, 2019;Killin, 2021), interpretive biases, including widely-held disciplinary assumptions (Gero, 2007;Lequin, 2018), the inheritance of problems pertaining to particular theories used to provision an inference (Killin & Pain, 2023b), and the extent to which past materials can be taken as a "simple reflection" of genetically endowed cognitive abilities (Sterelny, 2011(Sterelny, , 2017.…”

“…On an epistemic note, however, cognitive paleoanthropology's use of (and neuroarchaeology's reliance on) studies of modern humans also makes it beholden to critical discussions. These include neuroarchaeology's typically homogeneous pool of participants (Killin & Pain, 2023b), but also the use of ethnographic analogies in paleoanthropological theorizing (taking ethnographically‐recorded hunter‐gatherer groups as models or windows into the past)—to gain insights into worlds that might have well been shaped by different constraints and motives (Page & French, 2020; Spikins et al., 2017)—as well as philosophical discussions on the local license of analogies (Currie, 2016; Sterelny, 2022; Wylie, 1985).…”

Emotional Coping Strategies for Informal Caregivers of Hospitalized Patients: A Study of Distress and Overload

“…Therefore, it is essential to accurately identify coping strategies and sociodemographic variables that can predict psychological distress and overload in these caregivers of Ecuador. Understanding these coping mechanisms is essential to design effective interventions and supports that help them cope with the demands of providing care in non-weird 30 (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) population on these understudied aspects. This proposes a new approach to addressing the well-being of informal caregivers.…”