Psycho-cultural distance as indicated by a newly calculated measure

This graph, for example, shows how the various populations score in relation to the United States and to China.

X-axis=distance from U.S. as measured by a battery of psychological measures
Y-axis=distance from China as measured by a battery of psychological measures pic.twitter.com/BJABHOchgs

— T. Greer (@Scholars_Stage) November 29, 2018

Based on work by Muthukrishna, Michael and Bell, Adrian and Henrich, Joseph and Curtin, Cameron and Gedranovich, Alexander and McInerney, Jason and Thue, Braden, Beyond WEIRD Psychology: Measuring and Mapping Scales of Cultural and Psychological Distance (October 2, 2018):

Abstract: We present a new tool that provides a means to measure the psychological and cultural distance between two societies and create a distance scale with any population as the point of comparison. Since psychological data is dominated by samples drawn from the United States or other WEIRD nations, this tool provides a “WEIRD scale” to assist researchers in systematically extending the existing database of psychological phenomena to more diverse and globally representative samples. As the extreme WEIRDness of the literature begins to dissolve, the tool will become more useful for designing, planning, and justifying a wide range of comparative psychological projects. We have made our code available and developed an online application for creating other scales (including the “Sino scale” also presented in this paper). We discuss regional diversity within nations showing the relative homogeneity of the United States. Finally, we use these scales to predict various psychological outcomes.

Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3259613 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3259613.