This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on October 5, 2020 - October 11, 2020

In the final one-and-a-half centuries of the Tokugawa shogunate in the 18th to 19th century, Japan faced political economy disruptions owing to rising urban commercialism and Western economic and military aggression. The shogunate attempted three reformist movements during that time, all of which were heavily influenced by conventional Confucian ideas. These reform attempts were therefore efforts towards restoring Japanese morality, spirituality and philosophies guided by conventional Confucian ideas.

The failure of the shogunate to reform itself successfully brought about the Meiji restoration, which was a wholesale set of reforms with the assumption that the traditional Japanese societal, political and economic norms were insufficient in handling contemporary competition and threats from Western powers. To be clear, the shogunate was not blind to the threats it faced; it did attempt to reform itself after all. The question is, why were its reforms tilted towards more traditionalist perspectives, even in the face of the new technology and might demonstrated by the Western powers?

In fact, we can zoom out from the question to make it more general. In essence, it asks, “Why do societies make different choices even when presented with options that seem objectively far superior?” This question assumes that things such as technology, institutions and even culture are endogenous — society gets to choose from a suite of available options; they are not, with exceptions such as in the case of colonialism or the slave trade, thrust upon those societies. A clear example is nuclear power — societies know the technology exists but there are societies that refuse to consider nuclear power for its electricity generation.

According to economists Murat Iyigun and Jared Rubin, the answer that economics literature typically provides is due to political economy. Choices are made according to the interests of the politically powerful, via a society’s formal institutions. This is certainly a powerful explanation but it is incomplete. For one, those in power do sometimes make suboptimal choices that are against their interest and secondly, those in power do — at least theoretically in a democracy — give some consideration to the interests of the masses. They need the masses’ support to stay in power and, in some cases, to stay alive.

Iyigun and Rubin extend this further by presenting an economic model that better fits the role of society, introducing what they call a society’s “informal institutions”. By this, they mean social norms, beliefs and informal organisations that either complement or oppose the existing formal institutions that exist in a country. In other words, this is the “culture” of that society. Therefore, to understand the choices that a given society or country makes, it is important to understand the culture of that country.

In this context, I take the definition of culture from anthropology — “decision-making heuristics or ‘rules-of-thumb’ that have evolved, given our need to make decisions in complex and uncertain environments, which typically manifest themselves as values, beliefs or social norms”. However, an important point to make is that culture ultimately manifests itself via people — the physical, economic, political and social environments do shape culture, but culture is, at the bottom, down to people.

As such, in attempting to understand the culture of a given country, we need to also understand its people and therefore their general psychology. Every individual’s psychology is unique, but put a group of people together and maybe we can extract certain patterns. Moreover, perhaps we might even be able to see variations in the psychology of different societies — surely the psychology of American citizens is not identical to those of Chinese citizens?

In his book, The WEIRDest People in the World, Harvard evolutionary biologist Joseph Henrich describes the psychological peculiarity of people in Western Europe and the US, and provides a historical explanation of its genesis and evolution, as well as its impact. The book is magnificent and its content is worth many essays. However, for the purpose of this essay, it is useful to highlight that those in WEIRD societies — Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic — have a psychology that is distinct globally. This psychology might dominate today’s institutions, media, pop culture and philosophies, but as a percentage of the global population, WEIRD folks make up a much smaller fraction.

So what does WEIRD psychology entail? See if this resonates with you — WEIRD psychology need not limit itself to just folks in Western Europe and the US. According to Henrich, the traits of WEIRD psychology include world views that prioritise individualism and personal motivation (such as self-focus, guilt over shame, low conformity, time thrift and hard work, love of choice), as well as impersonal relationships (such as trust and cooperation with anonymous strangers in a marketplace or workplace, generalised principles of justice as opposed to relationship-based principles, a belief that intentions matter in moral judgement and free will).

In psychological experiments run all over the world, WEIRD psychology stands out. Most people around the world are not as strong in their WEIRDness. This means that in many societies, people prioritise business, legal and social relationships with members of their own families or clans, are more likely to feel shame (externally driven) than guilt (internally driven) when they have done something wrong, and are less likely to be individualistic, preferring to think of their kin or clan first.

Certainly, variation does not occur only between countries; it happens within countries as well. People living in New York have different psychologies from those living in, say, Alabama for a whole host of reasons. In Malaysia, this is also true. Those living in urban areas, particularly the Klang Valley, may have very different psychologies from those living in rural areas. There is a name for that former group; we call this group the “Bangsar bubble”.

We know that the Bangsar bubble does not represent the whole of Malaysia and is different from other regions. But how different? And in what way? My suspicion is that the Bangsar bubble is WEIRDer than the rest of the nation. And, as a consequence, the types of ideas and crimes that those in the Bangsar bubble are likely to support and punish are necessarily different from those regions in Malaysia that are less WEIRD.

To be clear, there is no right or wrong here — it is just different. What might seem universally morally “right” to a WEIRD person might not be that universal after all. For instance, New York University Stern School of Business psychologist Jonathan Haidt has shown how Republicans and Democrats prioritise different moral values that they believe should be “universal”.

Understanding the psychology of Malaysians is important because no institution, technology, “best practice” or even culture can ever be effective if it does not “fit” the social norms, and therefore psychology, of its people.

As Henrich puts it, “… any given set of institutions has only a limited number of likely ‘next moves’ because of the ‘fit’ between social norms, beliefs and existing institutions”.

As such, if those of us who are WEIRDer try to apply WEIRD psychology and WEIRD institutions to others who are far less WEIRD — as is the case for much of the world — it is exceedingly likely that those attempts will sputter out.

We need to acknowledge that being WEIRD is weird, and the majority of everyone else is not as WEIRD. And, in doing so, perhaps we can begin establishing proper bridges between the Bangsar bubble and folks from other regions in Malaysia to start making real societal progress. Psychology matters. It is time we understood each other better.

Nicholas Khaw is an economist with the Khazanah Research and Investment Strategy division

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