• The WEIRDest People in the World

  • How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous
  • By: Joseph Henrich
  • Narrated by: Korey Jackson
  • Length: 19 hrs and 3 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (439 ratings)

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The WEIRDest People in the World  By  cover art

The WEIRDest People in the World

By: Joseph Henrich
Narrated by: Korey Jackson
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Publisher's summary

A bold, epic account of how the co-evolution of psychology and culture created the peculiar Western mind that has profoundly shaped the modern world.

Perhaps you are WEIRD: raised in a society that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. If so, you’re rather psychologically peculiar.

Unlike much of the world today, and most people who have ever lived, WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. They focus on themselves—their attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations—over their relationships and social roles. How did WEIRD populations become so psychologically distinct? What role did these psychological differences play in the industrial revolution and the global expansion of Europe during the last few centuries?

In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church. It was these changes that gave rise to the WEIRD psychology that would coevolve with impersonal markets, occupational specialization, and free competition—laying the foundation for the modern world.

Provocative and engaging in both its broad scope and its surprising details, The WEIRDest People in the World explores how culture, institutions, and psychology shape one another, and explains what this means for both our most personal sense of who we are as individuals and also the large-scale social, political, and economic forces that drive human history.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2020 Joseph Henrich (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

"A fascinating, vigorously argued work that probes deeply into the way “WEIRD people” think." (Kirkus)

"Joseph Henrich has undertaken a massively ambitious work that explains the transition to the modern world from kin-based societies, drawing on a wealth of data across disciplines that significantly contributes to our understanding of this classic issue in social theory." (Francis Fukuyama, author of The Origins of Political Order and Political Order and Political Decay)

"Ambitious and fascinating...This meaty book is ready-made for involved discussions." (Publisher's Weekly)

What listeners say about The WEIRDest People in the World

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Lots of mispronounced words

Just a quick note that the narrator mispronounces lots of words. Not super difficult stuff - isn’t there a producer / editor to catch this stuff?

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36 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

bad narration of a good book

I highly recommend this book-- for reading. I don't recommend the audible version. The narrator has a pleasant enough voice and enunciates clearly (hence two stars instead of one), but his pronunciation is often distracting (e.g., "-ure" words such as "endure" sound like "-oor" words, and "prevalence" is read with the stress on the second syllable and a long "a" sound ...). The real problem, though, is that the narrator doesn't read as if he understands what he's saying. He seems to be reading word by word, rather than seeing where a sentence is going and adjusting his delivery to reflect the larger structure and the various components --phrases, clauses, conjunctions-- within it. I've been listening to audiobooks for at least 25 years, and I don't recall having come across another narrator who does so little to help me keep track of where I am in a sentence. Nevertheless, I did manage to listen to the whole book despite nearly giving up after 30 minutes. Switching to 1.25 speed (a first, for me) made a big difference.

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28 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Ruined by Poor Narration - Save your Money

A great book ruined by sloppy narration. Pathetic. The narrator sounds like he’s never read a book aloud before.

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

poor narrator

the narrator destroys this audiobook, it is almost unbearable to listen to. story is great en enlightening.

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10 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

One of the best books I've read about who we sre

This book continues and expands on Joe Henrich's excellent "The Secret of our Success" (2015). It must be one of the best books about anthropology, economics, and psychology in a long time. it explains who we (Europeans and North Americans) are, and we became this way. It's a well told story and very convincing.

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5 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Digestible Academia

This book does a dantastic job using high level behavioral studies to make its point, while making it graspable for any level reader.

The book falls a bit short of the apex because I feel that there wasnt a good point made for what should be done with the information given in this book. It makes it point and then ends.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Dense with ideas, Narration is perfectly fine

Despite some negative reviews, I found the narration perfectly fine. The audio performer has many credits to his name for good reason.

The book itself is dense with theories and ideas about cultural evolution. It’s a narrative about societies/cultures shaping the future. In our current time of partisan divides it’s worth contemplating how our societies are shaping us and how we can in turn shape them, hopefully for the better.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Narration made understanding the book more difficult.

The tone and tempo of the narrator was very distracting. Consider another performer next time.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Probably better experience with non-audio book

This book gets 5 stars for content, but definitely not for reading experience, especially on audible. This is probably worth getting the paper copy and re-reading at some point.
You could basically teach an undergrad level anthropology/history/psychology course with this as the textbook.
That’s how dense it is with theory, research references, and historical data.

The biggest takeaway is that there are objective differences in culture, developed as a result of a variety of specific historical factors, that play a huge factor in the success or failure of any group of people.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Fun but largely pseudo-science

Interesting read but way too long of a book to explore loosely correlated data sets without any real conclusion. Way too many of the chapter conclusions are disclaimed by roughly “it can’t be directly attributed…but we can see correlation” Author takes many liberties.

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1 person found this helpful