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Joe Henrich
@JoHenrich
, 9 tweets, 4 min read Read on Twitter
Interesting findings on personality variation across 15 nations by Laajaj et al in @ScienceAdvances. Kudos to the authors. Imho, they show little evidence for the BIG 5 model of personality outside the WEIRD societies. advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/7/ea…
However, analyzing a wide range of data with large-samples, they do find 1 dataset that does better in giving them data that matches the USA's BIG-5. It's an online website of mostly young, educated people that must respond in English, German, Dutch or Spanish.
This sample, which compensated people by providing them with info on their personality, likely skimmed off the WEIRDest people... Interest in personality is a WEIRD trait. English speakers interested in personality in Georgia, Serbia, Laos, etc. became the participants.
The paper focused on figuring out why these other countries aren't showing the BIG 5. Their implicit theory is, apparently, that everyone should show the BIG-5 (like Americans!) and if they don't, we've a methodological or measurement problem.
Puzzlingly, the authors don't consider alternative evolutionary theories that predict certain kinds of cultural differences. Theory isn't even mentioned. The BIG 5 is an inductive generalization based on work among Americans. Why would we expect it to be universal?
What would a good cultural evolutionary theory of personality look like? First, it would be good to show that the BIG-5 isn't universal. Gurven and colleagues have done that. apa.org/pubs/journals/… This new paper also does this in spades, even if they don't highlight this.
Then, it would be good to have a formal mathematical theory to check our verbal logic and make clear predictions: the Niche Diversity Hypothesis. @psmaldino psyarxiv.com/53wxg/
Then, it should be tested on the available cross-cultural datasets. Can the modeled theory explain some of the observed variations? @SpeciesTypical and collabs have done that (@PsychoSchmitt). journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…
But wait, some will say, personality traits are genetically heritable! Yes, and so are TV watching, playing basketball and smoking, but that doesn't make them targets of selection. Explaining heritability see @RuedenChris @SpeciesTypical paper: academic.oup.com/beheco/article…
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More from @JoHenrich see all

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Joe Henrich
@JoHenrich
When I discuss my concern that psychologists and behavioral economists rely on a thin and peculiar slice of humanity in order to understand HUMAN psychology, they often reply with the strong intuition that they (but perhaps not others) are studying “basic processes,” etc.
To assess how difficult it is to identify these “basic process” without both evolutionary theory and serious cross-cultural research, let’s put aside psychology and focus on physiology and anatomy. Surely, those are “basic.” #WEIRDPeopleProblem
WEIRD medical research suggests that inflammation is a risk factor for heart disease. But, when Gurven, Kaplan et al. studied the Tsimane (Amazonia), they found that the Tsimane have HIGH inflammation but virtually no heart disease. The Tsimane should have terrible heart disease.
Read 12 tweets
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Joe Henrich
@JoHenrich
Many psychologists seem very concerned about diversity among their faculty and grad students. But, nearly a decade after the WEIRD People problem was identified as a scientific issue, there's been essentially no change in the diversity of psychology PARTICIPANTS. >90% WEIRD
In Psychological Science in 2017, nearly 50% of all samples were American, but NO participants from Africa or Latin America. 6.6% from "Asia", which includes China, India and the entire Middle East. There was NO information on sources for nearly a quarter of the samples! Generic
Developmental psychology is no better. Here are the three top journals in developmental. There are more studies of non-humans primates than of Africans, Asians or Latin Americans!
Read 6 tweets
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Joe Henrich
@JoHenrich
Proper analyses of Whitehouse et. al.’s data reveals that moralizing god PRECEDE the rise of complex societies, but serious data concerns persist. psyarxiv.com/jwa2n @babeheim @DrQueue @martinlangcz @willismonroe @mmuthukrishna @slingerland20 @RachelASpicer @aiyanakoka
To see the issue, first take a look at the data the authors’ analyzed. 1 = moralizing god present, 0 = evidence of no moralizing gods, and NA = Missing data. Data for Whitehouse et. al.’s 12 key location (green when writing appears)
All the data leading up to the appearance of the moralizing gods are MISSING, except in the Yellow River (which is an error in Seshat and should be a ‘1’). How did Whitehouse handle this missing data?
Read 10 tweets

Related threads

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Moshe Hoffman
@Moshe_Hoffman
Best criticism of social-psychology I have seen 👇.

(By @PsychRabble et al)

Allow me to summarize the key points.

And two important takeaways.

(Thread)

dropbox.com/s/elimpj5u0aae…
The key point:

Fundamental problem in social psych (in addition to p-hacking):

Researchers, motivated by the “wow factor,” read into their (usually cool & interesting) results, the most shocking interpretation that’s *plausibly* consistent w/ their data.
Problem is:

Plausible ≠ justified.

Plausible leaves a lot of room for motivated reasoning.

Which few in field have an incentive to ever call out. Or raise more sensible interpretations.

Cause they also wanna teach and preach the “wow.”
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Kingsley Ogar
@IamKingsleyOgar
WHEN AND HOW TO USE “etc.” AND “et al.” IN SENTENCES

“etc.” and “et al.” are well known abbreviations in English, but English users still misuse them because of their semantic relationship.

Thread
@OgbeniDipo @DrJoeAbah
Although these abbreviations carry the same meaning, they are used in different contexts.

“etc.” is an abbreviation of the word, “et cetera”, which means “and others” or “and so forth”.
It is used after a list of things to show that there are other things that you could have mentioned. Please, take note of the phrase, “a list of things”. The phrase emphasizes that you don't use “et cetera” when listing people, but when listing things or items.
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Arrigo Triulzi
@cynicalsecurity
Am about to drop the backlog of arXiv & IACR papers for the past few weeks. If you are not interested mute this thread now :)
T. Xie et al. “The Untold Secrets of Operational Wi-Fi Calling Services: Vulnerabilities, Attacks, and Countermeasures” […study of exploring security issues of operational Wi-Fi calling services in three major U.S. operators’…using commodity devices…]

arxiv.org/abs/1811.11274
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arxiv.org/abs/1811.11218
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Brian D. Earp
@briandavidearp
Here is a little window into how the medical literature can get biased by controversial opinions disguised as 'systematic reviews' for anyone interested. I'll walk you through an example. Take this highly cited review article in the flagship @jsexmed sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
It purports to show that the "highest quality studies suggest that medical male circumcision has no adverse effect on sexual function, sensitivity, or satisfaction." Okay, how was the quality of studies rated, who did the rating, and is that what the studies actually show?
First, just notice that the authors report "no conflict of interest." Which is weird because the first author is co-founder of a pro-circumcision lobbying organization called the Circumcision Academy of Australia, several of whose board members derive their primary incomes from
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___________
@parking_seal
#Probablemente ([#EO]#probable🍀/[#EN]#Probably🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿)
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Bi de l'Extrême 🍋
@MsTellington
Cool, j'ai un exposé à faire sur un article de Virginie Julliard : #ThéorieDuGenre : comment débat-on du genre sur Twitter ?
Fun car ce sont mes binômes qui ont choisi le sujet et que ça tombe direct dans mes intérêts. Je vais faire un LT, ça me servira de notes !
Hypothèse du papier : Twitter produit un débat spécifique, en raison de ses propriétés & de la manière dont les utilisateurs s'en saisissent
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