Cultural Diversity Fuels Innovation

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Increased cultural diversity, as measured by surnames in US counties, is linked to higher innovation rates. This relationship is causal rather than merely correlational, supported by historical immigrant shocks that introduced cultural diversity to various counties over a century. These shocks act as exogenous experiments, demonstrating that diverse populations create more innovative patterns, thus illustrating the significant impact of diversity on local innovation dynamics.

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What are "WEIRD" cultures? What percentage of the world's population is WEIRD? Why do WEIRD cultures tend to use analytic thinking (as opposed to the wholistic thinking used in non-WEIRD cultures)? Does school make you more intelligent or merely more knowledgeable? Do individualistic cultures tend to innovate more than collectivistic cultures? How does moral reasoning differ between WEIRD and non-WEIRD cultures? Is the world becoming more WEIRD? How diverse are non-WEIRD cultures?

Joseph Henrich is currently the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. Before moving to Harvard, he was a professor of both Economics and Psychology at the University of British Columbia for nearly a decade, where he held the Canada Research Chair in Culture, Cognition, and Coevolution. His research deploys evolutionary theory to understand how human psychology gives rise to cultural evolution and how this has shaped our species' genetic evolution. Using insights generated from this approach, Professor Henrich has explored a variety of topics, including economic decision-making, social norms, fairness, religion, marriage, prestige, cooperation, and innovation. He's conducted long-term anthropological fieldwork in Peru, Chile, and in the South Pacific, as well as having spearheaded several large comparative projects. In 2016, he published The Secret of Our Success (Princeton) and in 2020, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous (FSG). Learn more about his work here, or follow him on Twitter / X at @JoHenrich.

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