WEIRD Questions: Diversifying Conceptual Sampling

Psychological science is defined in terms of the study of the human mind. Psychological research, however, has fallen short of examining diverse human populations, with most existing research focused on a small slice of human diversity around the globe, typically people from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) populations. On top of the WEIRD-participants problem, there is also a bias in the researchers themselves, most of whom come from WEIRD backgrounds. Here, we make the case for a new and distinct source of bias: WEIRD questions. Our species offers a substantially varied distribution of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral repertoires, but researchers have sampled topics and questions from a small part of this distribution, leaving out a variety of cognitive processes, emotions, and behaviors that remain understudied. We review sources of bias in asking questions about the human mind, discuss examples, and call for diversifying conceptual sampling in psychological science. We close by discussing some remedies to counter the WEIRD-questions problem: taking theory seriously, valuing descriptive research, rethinking team science, and aligning structural disciplinary incentives.