{"id":3283,"date":"2013-02-27T09:15:23","date_gmt":"2013-02-27T16:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/?p=3283"},"modified":"2014-09-12T11:48:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T17:48:00","slug":"why-americans-are-the-weirdest-people-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/2013\/02\/27\/why-americans-are-the-weirdest-people-in-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Americans Are the Weirdest People in the World"},"content":{"rendered":"Approximate Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

Why Americans Are the Weirdest People in the World<\/a>.<\/p>\n

the \u201cweird\u201d Western mind is the most self-aggrandizing and egotistical on the planet: we are more likely to promote ourselves as individuals versus advancing as a group.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fascinating. Greedy and selfish.<\/p>\n

In the end they titled their paper \u201cThe Weirdest People in the World?\u201d (pdf)<\/a> By \u201cweird\u201d they meant both unusual and Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. It is not just our Western habits and cultural preferences that are different from the rest of the world, it appears. The very way we think about ourselves and others\u2014and even the way we perceive reality\u2014makes us distinct from other humans on the planet, not to mention from the vast majority of our ancestors. Among Westerners, the data showed that Americans were often the most unusual, leading the researchers to conclude that \u201cAmerican participants are exceptional even within the unusual population of Westerners\u2014outliers among outliers.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Having actual REAL interactions with animals and the natural world is essential. (Might I say… I TOLD YOU SO!) According to this, it is quite possible that vegan and\u00a0 animals rights types have no real connection to the natural world (though they all seem to think they do).<\/p>\n

The WEIRD mind also appears to be unique in terms of how it comes to understand and interact with the natural world. Studies show that Western urban children grow up so closed off in man-made environments that their brains never form a deep or complex connection to the natural world. While studying children from the U.S., researchers have suggested a developmental timeline for what is called \u201cfolkbiological reasoning.\u201d These studies posit that it is not until children are around 7 years old that they stop projecting human qualities onto animals and begin to understand that humans are one animal among many. Compared to Yucatec Maya communities in Mexico, however, Western urban children appear to be developmentally delayed in this regard. Children who grow up constantly interacting with the natural world are much less likely to anthropomorphize other living things into late childhood.<\/p>\n

Given that people living in WEIRD societies don\u2019t routinely encounter or interact with animals other than humans or pets, it\u2019s not surprising that they end up with a rather cartoonish understanding of the natural world. \u201cIndeed,\u201d the report concluded, \u201cstudying the cognitive development of folkbiology in urban children would seem the equivalent of studying \u2018normal\u2019 physical growth in malnourished children.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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