The Weirdest People in the World

About the book

Joseph Henrich asks why Western people think the way they do: more individualistic, more analytic, more driven by guilt than shame than most humans in history. His answer starts with the medieval Church breaking up clans by banning cousin marriage, which reshaped families, then psychology, then economies. WEIRD stands for Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic, and the book argues that combination is rare across human history.