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I'd never heard the term WEIRD people, who are from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic countries. Interesting.

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Sounds like an acronym made up to make someone feel bad about the relatively good state of its society. Not really a fan of it.

I think the term is meant to draw attention to the fact that most study populations in psychology meet all of these criteria (a disproportionate number are college students, for example) and are statistically unrepresentative of the majority of humanity. Therefore their responses should be interpreted/extrapolated with caution - they are demographically "weird". It's not really intended to cast aspersions on the people themselves.

Yeah, I don't know if it's the origin of the phrase but College Students Are WIERD is the popularizer.

The point being that a bunch of psychology undergrads taking surveys because it's required of them is not necessarily a good way to draw conclusions about the species.

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