A new international analysis using the World Values Survey data from 2005 to 2022 suggests that higher education drives a global cultural alignment with WEIRD countries—the Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic states. The researchers, Cindel J. M. White and Michael Muthukrishna, report that those with more schooling are more similar to the United States and other WEIRD nations, a pattern observed across 95 countries and nearly 269,000 participants.
The work comes amid longstanding concerns that psychological research over-relies on Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic populations, often sourced from university settings. The WEIRD label has become shorthand for groups that may not reflect wider cultural norms, prompting questions about how well study findings generalise globally.
To probe representativeness, the authors examined whether socioeconomic status—operationalised through educational attainment, income, and subjective social status—shapes cultural traits across 95 countries. Analyses used a measure called the cultural fixation index to quantify how far groups diverge on a broad range of beliefs and behaviours, relative to the US as a prototypical WEIRD reference. Countries with fewer than 100 respondents were excluded, and the final country set varied between analyses.
Globally, the study found that those with higher education—and those with only secondary education—were more culturally similar to the United States than those with low educational attainment. For instance, highly educated Singaporeans resembled highly educated Australians in their cultural profile, while Singaporeans with lower education levels were comparatively distant from the US. Similarly, Russians with higher education were as similar to Americans as highly educated New Zealanders, but this pattern did not hold for Russians with low education. Overall, around seven in ten countries showed this education-linked pattern of WEIRD similarity.
Importantly, the researchers observed that income levels and subjective social status did not track the same pattern as education. They also noted that the degree of similarity to the US varied depending on which WEIRD country served as the reference point; the pattern was strongest when using Sweden, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Andorra, Norway, Germany, and Switzerland as benchmarks. The researchers suggest the effect may reflect a broader adoption of WEIRD cultural traits rather than a US-specific trend.
“Contrary to modernization theories, income and self-reported subjective status did not show the same pattern of WEIRD cultural similarity. Our results suggest that cross-cultural samples of students or university-educated individuals overrepresent cultural values that are typical of WEIRD countries,” the study authors concluded.
The study adds to the conversation about cross-cultural research by emphasising the potential skew introduced when samples are dominated by educated respondents. It remains focused on self-reported beliefs and behaviours, which may not always translate into everyday actions, but it marks a significant step in understanding how education shapes cultural norms across the globe.
The paper, “Higher education predicts global cultural similarity to WEIRD countries,” was authored by Cindel J. M. White and Michael Muthukrishna.
