Have you sometimes been skeptical about the results of research when the subjects are all college undergrads, and wondered how representative these subjects were of people as a whole? Regarding that skepticism, here's the abstract of an article for you from Science (AAAS):
A WEIRD View of Human Nature Skews Psychologists' Studies
Dan Jones
Although undergraduates from wealthy nations are numerous and willing research subjects, psychologists are beginning to realize that they have a drawback: They are WEIRDos. That is, they are people from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic cultures. In a provocative review paper published last week, a pair of researchers argues that WEIRDos aren't representative of humans as a whole and that psychologists routinely use them to make broad, and quite likely false, claims about what drives human behavior.
Excerpts from the article in the Ken Pope news e-mail (email Dr. Pope to subscribe):
Suppose you're a psychologist at a research university, trying to figure out what drives human behavior.
You have devised simple, clever experiments in which people play economic games or perceive visual illusions, and you would like large sample sizes.
How will you find subjects?
For generations of psychologists, the answer has been
