How WEIRD is the US and why does this matter for the rest of the world?

This article examines Henrich’s 2020 book, which tries to show how the relative success of the West can be explained through its peculiar cultural background. The article uses a decolonial approach to critique Henrich’s approach to culture for being imprecise, essentialist and individualist. Instead, it advocates an approach to culture that focuses on societies rather than individuals and has value systems at its core. Using the latest WVS and Hofstede data sets, it demonstrates that by these sets of scores, the US cannot be seen as representative of the West as a whole and that US culture is not particularly extreme on key cultural dimensions. The article concludes that culture is not an impediment to economic progress but that a lack of economic and cultural self-determination is.