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abstab's review against another edition
4.0
This book was very informational and resonate with me. I do think Western centricity does skew our perception of the world, and it was a very interesting point of view to follow to see how we as westerners are quite strange. Anthropology and human civilization development has always intrigued me and author Joseph Henrich draws his anthropologic background and cornerstone of psychology. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in analyzing how our society has formed and how we differ from many other human beings and civilizations solely because of the differences in individualism and group centricity.
pjb_reads's review against another edition
3.0
Preliminary rating, I still have to start reading. Looking forward to it.
sparrowhawk's review
informative
medium-paced
5.0
Informative and interesting. Good insight into how and why much of the world does not see relationships and community and "good" the same way as people who are Western, Educated, Industrializes, Rich, and Democratic
professorpi's review
5.0
A lot of stuff in here. My main takeaways were as follows:
- Ingroup mentality. I hadnt considered that (too weird myself) and it is definitely something to contemplate.
- Developing distinguishing characteristics as a networking tactic and impersonal relationships as a whole.
- Connects interestingly to some of david graeber’s concepts about debt.
- Protestants are more hardworking but also more likely to commit suicide. I genuinely think there is a lot there.
dmaurath's review
4.0
I should have checked the book length. I thought this book was going to be a focused exploration of how psychology is biased by its primarily WEIRD research subjects, but its scope was much bigger, a history of human behavior big. Too big. But I still learned a lot and found so much of it fascinating, particularly the end where he criticizes the artificial silos of anthropology, sociology and psychology and makes a compelling case for combining them to fully understand human behavior. We create our culture as much our culture creates us.
If you want all the details, read this, otherwise find a summary or simply read about the Marriage and Family Plan (MFP) on wikipedia. Most of the book is an argument for how the MFP formed modern WEIRD society.
If you want all the details, read this, otherwise find a summary or simply read about the Marriage and Family Plan (MFP) on wikipedia. Most of the book is an argument for how the MFP formed modern WEIRD society.
rags1709's review
4.0
Loved it! A solid 4 stars because it did carry the drab energy of a non-fiction book, at times.
janbo's review
2.0
Only the first and last ~100 pages respectively where pretty interesting.
In between there is a prolixity of highly speculative, tedious dwelling on the sociocultural evolution of religion. Shortly thereafter the author himself concludes that there was no relevance to the topic at hand, the WEIRD psychology since universalizing religion developed in most parts of the world. I felt robbed of my time at that point. At least I learned that this is a particularly WEIRD feeling.
I strongly suspect the other half of the central section to be filled with prime replication crisis material. There is little hard evidence and a plethora of correlational data supporting the assertions in that segment.
In between there is a prolixity of highly speculative, tedious dwelling on the sociocultural evolution of religion. Shortly thereafter the author himself concludes that there was no relevance to the topic at hand, the WEIRD psychology since universalizing religion developed in most parts of the world. I felt robbed of my time at that point. At least I learned that this is a particularly WEIRD feeling.
I strongly suspect the other half of the central section to be filled with prime replication crisis material. There is little hard evidence and a plethora of correlational data supporting the assertions in that segment.
m_thf's review against another edition
4.25
This could have been a lot shorter and is in parts very speculative - but the highly self aware and engaging writing style makes up for it. Reading this as a very WEIRD person while currently in a decidedly non-WEIRD context was continuously eye-opening. Took a lot of notes!