What can Asia learn from an emerging Africa?

Having grown up in a former colony, I have come to realise that the most complex problem in forming one’s own mental infrastructure is the colonisation of the mind. As several Canadian social psychologists (Henrich et al, 2010) observed, the bulk of research work on human behaviour and psychology in the world’s top journals are based on samples drawn mostly from Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. The scientific question is whether the WEIRD samples are the outliers or whether the rest of the world are the outliers?

We cannot answer these complex questions until we dig out the data and perspectives from the rest of us. And that is the question out of Africa for Asians.

Copyright The Star Online 2014

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