Warging as a way to bridge the representation gap

"The weirdest people in the world?" is a title of a paper written by Joseph Henrich and others highlighting the bias of Psychology as a science. 

check this for ref: https://www.amazon.com/WEIRDest-People-World-Psychologically-Particularly-ebook/dp/B07RZFCPMD 

Claims about universality among other nativist views dominated science for a long time and it can be traced back to a range of reasons one of which is a purely theoretical one. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the cultural context of even those who make these theoretical judgments and implement studies. 

The European domination of not only participation and collected data by which the experimental science is making its alleged progress but rather those who analyze it with all their biases and cultural content.

Conversations about this weird-oriented literature are taking place in the lobbies of western psychology institutes (W*I*E*R*D refers to Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies), efforts to replicate studies on under-represented populations are called for, researchers are asking where this science has gone wrong, and books are written on de-colonizing psychology. 

Great right?

well, it is great indeed. But... 

Although things are progressing in a seemingly correct direction, I am an amateur psychologist who is coming from not only an under-represented place but what I can call a "blind spot" in the map of experimental psychology. Things are different for me.

The first thought that could come to mind is: well then the problem could be solved by carrying out experiments and replications there, a very big replication project would do. 

It might, but...

"It is important to observe people from other contexts to understand their point of view and where they stand," said one of my professors speaking about how social psychology falls short of providing insights into the behavior of human beings in different places. 

is it enough to observe? 

As limited as I know about it, I want to borrow Edward Saeed's orientalism term here. In our history, I presume, we have all heard about Western people coming to our region and exploring places and people. They end up writing about us, and I am sure we all know how we often feel when we read those writings or hear them talk about us. " well, it who is that are you talking about?" 

One important side of doing research as I learned is to have a solid prior hypothesis that is theoretically justified and data only plays a confirmatory role. but how would you as a person who doesn't belong to that population theorize and make hypotheses about a whole different context in geography, language, social structure, and governing? It might be extremely valuable to have the perspective of knowledgeable figures who are independent thinkers on any hypothesis regarding underrepresented populations. 

But, The process of generating hypotheses and theorizing about them, who does that? the roots of the problem in psychology are not the lack of data in itself but rather the lack of people who could theorize about the specific context from within that context and then go to collect data based on that. 

Bridging the gap in the number of researchers from those understudied geographies would have a direct impact on the amount of data coming from there, but data in itself isn't as important as generating the hypothesis that it should help to test. 

I am assuming now that my point became a bit clearer: we need those underrepresented people to lead the effort to understand themselves, not to fall into the hole of orientalism in psychology. 

Let recruit!

if I was able to catch your attention to read all this, then we can switch the conversation in a new direction. What kind of people from an under-represented population has the ability to climb the ladder and become a proficient experimental psychologist who studies their population and have far-reaching implications on the process of researching itself and bringing more like them to the table to cut this "orientalist" view loose once and for all. 

" who is that person who represents the under-represented? "

.... to be continued