[dlss]

The view you're espousing is wrong. When you actually test if what you're calling human universals actually are universal, you generally find they're not:

"Broad claims about human psychology and behavior based on narrow samples from Western societies are regularly published in leading journals. This review suggests not only that substantial variability in experimental results emerges across populations in basic domains, but that standard subjects are in fact rather unusual compared with the rest of the species - frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, categorization, spatial cognition, memory, moral reasoning and self-concepts. This review (1) indicates caution in addressing questions of human nature based on this thin slice of humanity, and (2) suggests that understanding human psychology will require tapping broader subject pools. We close by proposing ways to address these challenges."

(The thin slice of humanity referred to above is westernized college students. Perhaps mechanical turkers do not suffer from this bias? seems unlikely though)

http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~ara/Manuscripts/Weird_People_BBS_H...

also see http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/psychology... and http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201... for pop write-ups.

[tinco]

Thanks! That's interesting, seems I might have had it wrong. I should've brought that up during my friends master thesis presentation, maybe he wouldn't have got his diploma ;) Are psychology researchers in general aware of this review? Obviously my friends master thesis was just a small inconsequential study, but if the universals that are now commonly used have turned out to not actually be true wouldn't that mean huge swathes of researchers have to retract/redo their research?

[archgoon]

> but if the universals that are now commonly used have turned out to not actually be true wouldn't that mean huge swathes of researchers have to retract/redo their research?

Reproducibility is a major concern. Many experiments are poorly designed.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/349/6251/aac4716

So, yes, about 60% of research needs to be redone.