Joesph Henrich

If asked to think about the term ‘mental health’ and all of the important names that come to mind with it, there are probably a few that stand out to you immediately: Freud, perhaps, or Skinner. Some of you may even think of John Watson or Carl Jung, or any number of historic psychological thinkers and researchers. But a very small number of you—if any at all—would have thought of the name Joseph Henrich.

Of course, that’s understandable—unlike the other people on that list, Joseph Henrich is still alive and currently a professor at Harvard University. He’s also the author of a book by the name of The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous. And yes, that capitalization was on purpose. WEIRD stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic—or everything that most of the rest of the world is not. 

This label might not seem like a huge deal, especially when we here in the US tend to take pride in our position as a global superpower. But there are problems that come along with being a WEIRD country. The majority of psychological research now is being conducted in and on WEIRD populations, and it has been this way for a long time. Think back to that earlier list of names—all of them were from WEIRD countries, too. And while this has led to many important discoveries and established the foundation for psychology as a field, it presents important consequences for the rest of the world, especially as psychology becomes a global phenomenon. 

However, we don’t need to travel to the other side of the world for the consequences of WEIRD thinking to become stark. Most minority populations here in the US don’t subscribe to distinctly WEIRD thinking but are treated with distinctly WEIRD treatment methods, lowering their effectiveness and contributing to the statistic that many minority populations have higher rates of mental illness. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle, and it’s one that’s not easily noticed, especially when many minority communities also have lower rates of seeking psychological help. 

Henrich’s work in cultural psychology represents an important first step in combating this problem. More and more people are starting to recognize the importance of accounting for cultural differences in therapeutic practice, but it’s a slow change, and there’s always more that we can do. Hopefully, by writing this article, I’ve helped you place one more stepping stone and building block in understanding and respecting the diversity that abounds all over the world.