Douglas Lee Medin - US grants

The goal of this research is to develop and test theories of human similarity processing. Similarity provides the basis for much of concept learning, transfer of knowledge from one situation to another, and generalization. Conversely, similarity can also be a source of human error, for instance when confusions between similar-looking materials or devices occur. This research will develop a new approach to encompass a range of human similarity processes, from causal and functional similarities to perceptual similarities. This approach departs from prior approaches in emphasizing the psychological processes that underlie similarity. The first set of studies will investigate interconnectivity, i.e., whether interactions between features can make some aspects of objects more salient in similarity judgments or even change the psychological interpretation of their properties. The second issue is the effect of alignment in judgments of the similarity of two figures. These studies will investigate how the seeming similarity between two figures changes as a function of how easy it is to place components of object representation in correspondence. A third set of studies will investigate the effect of similarity in constructive induction. These studies are based on the hypothesis that when people judge similarity, they sometimes align non- identical features in a way which captures only their abstract commonalities. For example, two engines, one missing a fan belt and the other with a broken generator, may be judged similar because they have dysfunctional parts. These research results will inform us about the range and flexibility of similarity processing. The next set of studies will address the dynamic process of similarity computation. In these studies, people will be asked to perform rapid similarity matches or will view similarity pairs for varying periods; this will allow comparison of fast and slow similarity judgments. If fast judgments have dynamics different from slow, interfaces and devices to which humans must respond quickly will have to be designed accordingly. The final set of studies will investigate the role of similarity in other cognitive processes. Some experiments will examine the role of similarity in category-based induction. For example, when people are told a new fact about some entity, (e.g., a tiger) they typically assume that the fact applies to other similar entities, (e.g., a lion). This research will investigate whether the similarity is symmetrical or directional and what aspects of the similarity affect further inferences that can be made. Other experiments will investigate whether the process of retrieval from memory can change the subsequent representation of the items. If items stored in memory are changed by the process that retrieves them, it suggests how gradual learning can occur and how certain similarity-based distortions can come about.

The research analyzes the interaction of knowledge, behaviors and values in environmental decision making. Data are collected from two sites where Native American and majority culture populations share a habitat but conflict over resource use: the Wolf River area of Wisconsin and the Lowland Maya forest region of Guatemala. Studies integrate formal modeling techniques from psychology, anthropology and sociology to show that: (1) people share cultural models of the environment to a surprisingly detailed degree; (2) these mental models inform and predict actual behaviors, with measurable ecological consequences; and (3) individual and cultural differences in models are motivated by different patterns of resource valuation. Research findings are expected to establish: (4) a first approximation of ecological cognition across cultures, (5) a cognitive dimension to stimulate new research on how people decide to manage common resources; and (6) a comprehensive basis for conflict-resolution negotiation that involves understanding the relations between environmental cognitions, behaviors and values.

Throughout their life people continually acquire, refine and update concepts. These concepts and categories are use to understand, reason about, and make predictions concerning actions and events in the world. Although studies have provided a good base of information on how people acquire and use concepts, current theory and data are weighted toward category learning and organization among populations of relative novices. Our findings to date suggest that key generalizations concerning conceptual behavior may not hold for more expert populations. In addition our findings are revealing new principles of categorization and the use of categories in reasoning which are not addressed by current theories. This project will continue to investigate how the organization and use of categories changes as a function of goals and experience. Our study populations include different cultures as well as different types of expertise. We have begun to develop new models for category-based reasoning and the proposed studies will provide empirical tests of a new theory of inductive reasoning. This project constitutes basic research on human cognition but it is relevant to a variety of practical contexts such a science education.

This project will study children's acquisition knowledge in the domain of biology. The goal is to understand better what biological knowledge children bring to the classroom and how this knowledge is organized to support reasoning and explanation. Although children's understanding of biology has been examined in quite a few studies, little attention has been directed at the question of how biological knowledge might vary in children being raised in different cultural settings and among adults with different levels of experience. Since the existing work in the area suggests that adult conceptions of biological kinds and ecological relationships varies with culture and experience, children's understandings of nature likely also varies with culture and experience. Identifying cross-cultural differences and commonalities in biological knowledge is important if we are to meet the educational goals of the 21st century. It is also important to build theories that reflect accurately the diversity in knowledge and experience of people around the world. The project will include a number of under-studied populations, including urban and rural majority culture children, urban Mexican immigrant children, rural Native American children, rural Yukatek Maya and Ladino children. Children and adults will be given a variety of tasks to probe their underlying biological concepts (e.g. "alive"), processes, and relationships. In addition, the research will examine parent-child dyads and other sources of information that help to shape children's conceptions of biology. The research will test specific theories about which aspects of biological knowledge are likely to be universal, which aspects vary with culture and experience, and how these variations interact with formal instruction. This research is directly relevant to science education. It is important to engage the understandings that children bring to the classroom in order to build on their real world experience and to address misconceptions when they arise. To ignore real world experience would risk failure to understand the educational possibilities for learning about science in general, and biology in particular.

The long-term goal of the researchers is to improve science learning for Native- American students and so to reduce the disparity between majority and minority culture students' science achievement. The project will provide a controlled test of the claim that bridging cultural differences in how one understands science will lead to improved learning of science content knowledge. The PIs' previous research with the Menominee has indicated that rural Native-American children begin school with a relatively precocious understanding of biology, but that this initial knowledge of the natural world does not translate into superior learning in traditional science curricula. On standardized tests Menominee children score above the national average in science in fourth grade, but by eighth grade it is their worst subject. The PIs explore the hypothesis that Native-American practices may clash with the cultural context and methodology used in the formal teaching of science. The proposal includes studies that will explore the educational relevance of cultural differences in approaches to the teaching of science and it includes the design, implementation, and evaluation of an after-school program. The initial studies will continue the researchers efforts to identify barriers to Native-American science learning and to develop and test strategies for building on the cultural knowledge that Native-American children bring to the classroom. Research on children's folkbiology has been conducted almost exclusively with individuals from urban North American populations. The proposed research will bring more evidence to bear on the problem of science learning in minority culture contexts.

The current project is designed to discover how fundamental biological concepts are understood in different learning contexts and across different cultural groups. Mainstream European-American and Native-American populations are compared to discover how concepts of the natural world are shaped by different belief systems and practices; urban and rural populations are compared to discover how both direct contact with the natural world and exposure to popular media influence learning and reasoning. The investigators attempt to tease apart: a) various sources of environmental input (e.g., habitual contact with the natural world, native language, and belief systems); b) various formal and informal contexts (e.g., school and home settings); and c) various media of transmission (e.g., books, videos, and conversation). The research protocol includes an array of categorization and reasoning tasks that have been adapted to suit the cultural profiles of each community. In addition, the project involves an analysis of the cultural practices and the input that parents and teachers provide to children. Focal content points of this proposal are children's intuitions about the place of humans in the natural world (e.g., anthrocentrism) and their tendency to engage in ecological or taxonomic reasoning. An integral component of this research program is its integration of members of under-represented communities and building of infrastructures to support their lasting involvement in research.

This project is a collaborative effort between Northwestern University, TERC, the Menominee Tribal School (MTS) and the American Indian Center of Chicago (AIC). The long-term goal of the proposed project is to improve science learning and school achievement for Native-American children. They begin school with an advanced understanding of biology and superior performance on standardized tests compared to their non-Native peers, but in later years this benefit does not result in high levels of school achievement and biology becomes their worst subject. Understanding why and how this happens is a central purpose of this research. Previous work examined the hypothesis that there is discord between Native-American cultural ways of knowing biology and the cultural ways of knowing in school science and that this discord is at the heart of student disengagement and underachievement. A central feature of the discord was found to be the lack of explicit connections across contexts in which students learn science. The lack of connections is manifest across a range of levels, including content knowledge, practices, values, and relevance to family, community, and society at large. The project is composed of two complementary strands of work aimed at supporting students? navigation between and through the various cultural contexts in which they learn science. One strand consists of design experiments in both in-school and out-of-school settings that will allow the researchers to continue to develop, extend, and refine design principles and related curricular innovations. The second strand consists of a series of small-scale cognitive studies that are intended to support components of the design work. Further, this project will contribute to the growing body of work exploring the deep intellectual resources students from non-dominant backgrounds bring to teaching and learning environments and the ways in which these resources can enhance school science learning. Previous work demonstrates that culturally- and community-based science programs can affect identification with science, motivation to learn science and conceptions of the very nature of science. The proposers of this project are anxious to develop and test the framework further and to implement their design principles in classrooms and after-school programs.

How do language, culture and experience influence children's developing understanding of the natural world in general and of biological concepts in particular? The PIs address these questions through cross-linguistic, cross-cultural and developmental studies. Previous research has been based mainly on children from middle-class, urban, technologically advanced populations. This narrow empirical base limits our ability to determine whether any of the biological concepts held by children are universal, and how children's early concepts are shaped by the linguistic and cultural communities in which they are immersed. With previous NSF funding, the PIs launched a comprehensive investigation of biological knowledge and reasoning in young children and adults from a range of cultural and linguistic communities (e.g. Indonesian, Yukatek Maya), communities that also varied in the richness of their direct experiences with nature (urban, rural European-American, rural Native-American). Cross-linguistic developmental studies established that language affects the development of basic concepts such as "alive." The present project will broaden our base of languages (Polish, Bulgarian, Turkish) to pursue linguistic influences in the development of biological concepts. Recent evidence from the investigators suggests that, in contrast to previous theorizing, a human-centered biology is neither an inevitable stage of development nor an automatic result of impoverished experience with plants and animals. Instead it appears that an anthropocentric biology is a learned cultural model. The goal for the current proposal is to deepen our understanding of cultural models for relating to nature and to explore their role in the development of children's understanding of biology. The investigators will use a variety of measurements and learning and reasoning tasks to examine how children integrate and coordinate different sources of knowledge and cultural models (e.g. discourse with parents, books, Disney movies, Discovery channel) related to nature.

This proposal represents basic science, but it also is relevant to a number of national and practical goals. By sharpening our understanding of what biological knowledge young children from various cultural groups (urban and rural Native-American as well as U.S. majority culture) bring to their U.S. classrooms, we should be able to improve science instruction. The diversity of our study populations allows us to determine which patterns of development have broad generality and, where we observe variation, to understand how cultural practices shape understandings of biology. The studies of the role of language may also suggest strategies for reducing the confusion between everyday uses of biological kind terms (e.g. "alive") and concepts needed in school (e.g. "living thing"). No less important, the research will make significant strides to increase the diversity of the populations being studied and the researchers studying them, reinforce research partnerships, and foster research infrastructure as a means of empowering tribal institutions in the domain of scientific research, educational policy and educational practice.

Common approaches to resource and political conflicts often assume adversaries understand the world on the basis of rational choices. Given this assumption, one can predict the behavior of potential allies and adversaries by analyzing the costs and benefits of a given action from their perspective. In prior research involving psychological experiments, anthropological fieldwork and political science surveys relating to political and resource conflicts, the PIs have found that that when sacred or protected values (e.g.
"My values are not for sale"; "Do the right thing regardless of the consequences") are in play, the assumption that the values people place on different actions is simply the sum of the values of their consequences may be wrong. As a result, the practice of providing incentives to increase the attractiveness of certain courses of action and/or penalties to make other courses of action less attractive to try and achieve a desired outcome in a conflict may backfire. Planning and acting in ignorance of or disregard for non-consequentialist value frameworks may exacerbate conflict, with grievous loss of treasure and lives.

In the proposed research, the PIs examine how different moral frames, with different types and uses of sacred values, shape personal and collective identity, influence cultural and political decision making, and sustain inter-group conflict. The studies will broaden theoretical and empirical analyses of moral cognition, including how protected or sacred values (SVs) affect people's lives and play out in diverse cultural contexts. SVs are distinct from secular values because of their association with transcendental beliefs, relative immunity to tradeoffs with instrumental values, emotional salience, and significance for personal and collective identity. The project will examine how SVs operate in real-world contexts, identifying those circumstances where they result in decision makers ignoring material consequences and distance in time or place and produce paradoxical results as well as those where they produce outcomes that track those that follow from the consequentialist assumption. The methodology integrates basic and applied research, combining laboratory and field experiments, surveys and interviews in a number of different cultural settings (North America, the Middle East, and India) in order to provide "real-world" relevance.

The results will contribute to a comprehensive theoretical framework and wide-ranging empirical analysis of the psychological and cultural mechanisms underlying moral reasoning and decision making, the formation of cultural identity, and the nature of sacred values.

The purpose of this three-year collaborative design research project is to examine the role of culture in the development of knowledge and reasoning about the natural world and the subsequent sense-making of and participation in natural resource management. The PIs propose to examine the ways in which culture impacts observational habits, explanation constructing, uses and forms of evidence, and orientations towards socio-scientific challenges such as natural resource management. Collaborating on this project are researchers from the American Indian Center of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. The audience for this study includes the academic informal science education community and indigenous science educators. This project also offers extensive cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary research opportunities for pre- and post-doctoral research trainees.

The project will employ a mixed methods approach and proposes evaluation through an advisory board and community input. A community assessment team is proposed to review activities, obtain feedback from the larger community, and identify challenges to the effective implementation of the program. The project is comprised of two main panels of studies: the first consisting of a series of investigations of learning in everyday activities and the second consisting of two community design experiments that engage two Native American communities and two non-Native communities, one rural and one urban for both communities, in a culturally based citizen science (CBCS) project focused on ecosystem disruption (e.g. invasive species; climate change) and natural resource management. The CBCS project will engage participants in question formation, data collection, data analysis, forming policy recommendations, and citizen action around the findings. This project will develop a citizen science model that effectively engages diverse communities towards productive science learning, helpful scientific data collection, and citizen engagement in community planning and local policy decisions.

The researchers believe that fundamental advances in STEM teaching and learning are needed across the broad landscape of learning environments and that the success of such advances may pivot on innovations and discoveries made in informal environments. Insights obtained from prior research on learning in indigenous cultures, especially in biological and environmental sciences, combined with the anticipated results from this study could lead to a deeper understanding of cross-cultural similarities and differences in science learning.

The objective of this project is to examine the role of culture in the development of children's knowledge of and reasoning about the natural world. This project builds on previous work that found cultural differences in science-related practices such as observation, hypothesis formation, and explanation. It also extends design research to preschool contexts with both Native and European-American children, with the goal of finding ways to design rigorous science learning environments for young children. The study populations include both urban and rural Native-American and (mainly) European-American children. The studies include adults and children of different ages, with tasks tailored to each sample. This will achieve a more comprehensive view of the development of understandings of nature. The project is a collaborative effort between TERC, the American Indian Center of Chicago, the Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin, and Northwestern University. The overall goal is to improve science learning by bringing informal, out-of-school learning to bear on more formal, school-based science learning.

The project employs an integration of multiple methods and measures to conduct three sets of studies. 1. Studies of input conditions and learning in everyday contexts. 2. More formal cognitive science studies of children's learning and conceptual organization. 3. Community-based design experiments focused on science learning. In different ways, each of these methods allows the project to further develop, test, and examine the educational implications of proposed theories of how culture affects science learning. This research project offers extensive cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary research opportunities for pre- and post-doctoral research trainees. Members of Native American communities have increasingly become involved on related project as PIs, research assistants, and graduate fellows. An important aspect of this project is resource development and capacity building in Native-American institutions.

This research should have strong impacts on theories of cognitive and conceptual development, especially those pertaining to how children's and adults' existing knowledge is shaped by culture and experience. It should also promote an expansive view of cultural practices, including contact with the natural world, community forms of engagement, and parent-child interactions. The project develops classroom practices that, if successful, have excellent potential for scaling up and generality. Moreover, this project will provide a deeper understanding of the developmental processes underlying cross-cultural similarities and differences in science learning. This will serve as an essential resource in national and local efforts to advance the education of children enrolled in US schools, including the increasing number of children from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

This project is an empirical research study using a resiliency-based framework to investigate the factors that contribute to American Indian and Alaska Native (AI-AN) success and achievement in STEM education and careers. The focus is on what makes people successful rather than what makes them fail. It was developed through a partnership between the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), the Office for Community Health (OCH) at the University of New Mexico (UNM), and Northwestern University. The project is also interdisciplinary, partnering researchers from Anthropology, Psychology and Economics/Public Health with AISES to contribute a unique perspective on Native participation in STEM. The aim of this research is to identify the role of culture, individual identity, epistemology and bi-cultural efficacy in this process. The guiding hypothesis is that AI-AN success in STEM is influenced by dynamics of culture, epistemology and individual identity, with the role of bi-cultural efficacy being particularly significant. The researchers are interested in knowing: (a) What factors positively influence AI-AN success in STEM?; (b) What role do the dynamics of culture, epistemology and individual identity play in AI-AN success in STEM and how are these dynamics played-out in individual experience?; and (c) Does bi-cultural efficacy play a role in this process, and if so, what is that role?

The proposed collaboration uses a mixed methods design, beginning with an ethnographic approach that will build on advances in knowledge from the extensive literature on deficits and barriers, and nascent research on epistemology, adding new empirical data. The research consciously privileges voices of Native scholars whose experience is not well represented in mainstream perspectives or taken into consideration by policy makers. Adaptive project design through iterative data collection and analysis with synthesis and incorporation of findings from different components ongoing throughout the study will allow for dynamic inclusion of participant input. The study includes four separate but integrated research components: (1) 75 in-depth ethnographic interviews with 25 AI-AN STEM professionals and AISES members, conducted in three iterative sets of 25 each; (2) Three AI-AN undergraduate Student Research Scientists (SRS) from UNM will be mentored in the conduct of 36 peer interviews (12 each) with other AI-AN students; (3) Secondary analysis of unique AISES organizational archive with 35 years of information on more than 6000+ AI-AN involved in STEM; and (4) a preliminary survey will be conducted in year three of the project with 25 AISES members to validate measures of bi-cultural efficacy that contribute to AI-AN success in STEM. The Principal Investigators will mentor Native scholars to develop protocols, collect and analyze data, present findings, and participate as members of the Research Team. A Project Summit in Year Three will disseminate project findings to a broad group of AISES stakeholders. This project will also structure a new role for AISES to play in the STEM community by leveraging the unique position of AISES as a national AI-AN STEM organization and developing data collection protocols and data collection tools the organization can continue to use for research in the future.

Results of this research will increase understanding of how AI-AN individuals leverage personal and cultural assets in a way that embraces a congruency between Indigenous culture (Native science) and Western science as they achieve success in STEM. This information will contribute to the literature analyzing issues in AI-AN education and under-representation in STEM and indicate directions for future research. Most importantly, this research may lay the foundation for increasing the proportion of AI-AN scientists. Factors that contribute to success and achievement of AI-AN in STEM are often unrecognized, underappreciated or poorly understood. The improved coherence of interventions that will result from better conceptualization of the strengths and needs of AI-AN students will provide a roadmap for developing best-practice and model-driven programming within universities, improve AI-AN educational outcomes in STEM, and in turn, contribute to improvements in AI-AN individual and community well-being.

This research engages a fundamental question for cognitive science and decision making: what is at stake in cultural resource conflict over human-environment interactions? One of the most fundamental concepts under debate involves what-or-who is at stake in environmental dilemmas. Understanding people's environmental behavior requires understanding how they relate to other life forms as intentional agents worthy of moral consideration. This interdisciplinary research investigates how concepts of nonhuman agency interrelate with environmental cognition and decision making across two communities living in a shared ecosystem: Indigenous Ngöbe and mainstream (Ladino, Euro-American) actors in Bocas del Toro, Panama (also including selected comparisons to standard U.S. samples). Studies employ cognitive and psychological methods to target key predictions concerning cultural variation in nonhuman agency concepts, and associated reasoning about moral circles and ecological causation. It is predicted that cultural differences in cognition will lead individuals to approach environmental decision making in very different ways: either as an ecological question that positions humans as users and protectors of the environment, or as a social question that positions both humans and nonhumans as intentional stakeholders in shared community.

This dissertation research will advance cognitive theory by offering a novel analysis of the conceptual frameworks involved in reasoning about nature across cultures, providing insight into the moral and causal dimensions of ecological thought. A distinct advantage of this work is its focus on under-represented perspectives of indigenous communities, contributing to the diversity of social science study populations and offering a unique vantage point on environmental questions. By documenting how cultural concepts and values impact perceptions of environmental tradeoffs, this research sheds light on cultural resource conflict (and cooperation) between indigenous and mainstream groups. More broadly, the results will deepen knowledge about the cultural and cognitive factors underlying environmental decision making, speaking to core issues in the decision science of human-environment interactions.

Most experimental studies in the behavioral sciences rely on college students as participants for reasons of convenience, and most take place in North America and Europe. As a result, studies are only sampling from a narrow range of human experiences. The results of these studies have limited generalizability, failing to reflect the full range of mental and behavioral phenomena across diverse cultures and backgrounds. However sampling from broader populations is challenging, due to limited opportunities and access, heightened cost, and the need for specific knowledge about how to adapt research protocols to different communities. The goal of this workshop is to develop some tools and guidelines to help researchers overcome barriers to broader sampling, and to incentivize doing so through better institutional support.

The goal of this workshop is to develop tools to support and encourage increased robustness and generalizability in the experimental behavioral sciences. The meeting is dedicated to identifying and developing potential solutions to the so-called "WEIRD people" problem: the fact that most experimental behavioral science research is conducted with members of WEIRD populations (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich Democracies). The discovery that much of this research fails to generalize to broader populations and fails to capture the range of human patterned variation in thought and behavior creates a pressing need for research approaches to be more inclusive. Although there are researchers throughout the world who have developed effective models for overcoming these limitations, there are significant barriers to achieving robust and generalizable experimental behavioral research for most researchers. This workshop will bring together scholars from a range of disciplines whose research represents positive case studies of how to overcome these barriers. The participants aspire to accomplish three goals: 1) develop tools and training materials to help researchers enhance diversity in their research populations, 2) develop infrastructure solutions for connecting researchers across diverse contexts and populations, and 3) develop a set of recommendations for institutional changes to support enhancing diversity in experimental behavioral science through manuscript, grant, and tenure review.

As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative research, approaches and resources for use in a variety of settings. The project will conduct research designed to deepen our fundamental knowledge about culture, experience, and ecosystems cognition and to develop innovative practices and approaches to support learning about changing ecological systems and environmental decision making. Work on cultural differences in the production of complex systems knowledge is severely lacking. This gap in knowledge may contribute to the continued reproduction of inequities in science education. More broadly findings from this project will have clear implications for theories of cognitive development, especially those pertaining to how knowledge is shaped by culture and experience. Focusing on ecosystems may represent an opportunity to not only increase engagement and achievement in science among non-dominant communities and Native youth specifically, but also advance effective learning for all communities. The primary deliverables for the project are conference presentations and research publications. However, the project will also develop additional resources freely available to researchers, educators, and the general public. These will include summer curricular materials and teaching tools, professional development workshops, practitioner briefs about research findings that can be used in professional development workshops and shared share more broadly, and evaluation reports.

A deeper understanding of cultural influences on conceptions of the natural world can serve to advance the educational needs of children, including children from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Project research will include two interrelated series of studies designed to expand knowledge about human cognition of complex ecosystems and the affordances of informal STEM learning environments in developing and supporting the critical 21st century skill of ecological systems level reasoning. The first consists of a series of experiments focused on ecological cognition and the role of humans in nature. The second consists of design-based research interventions in informal settings, summer workshops for youth and the communities, focused on ecological systems level thinking and socio-environmental decision making. The project will recruit and engage both child and adult participants from two broad cultural communities, Native Americans and European Americans living in urban and suburban communities, in part because it affords a sharp test of human-nature relations. Sampling from two different urban communities will avoid simple Native-non-Native comparative binaries and to conduct Native-to-Native comparative analysis. Based on results from this, the project will result in: 1) foundational knowledge about human learning and reasoning and ecosystems and environmental decision making, 2) culturally responsive models of learning and practice about complex ecosystems for indoors and outdoors informal learning environments, and 3) insights about research-practice-community partnerships. One important objective of the research is to broaden participation and close opportunity gaps for under-represented groups in STEM fields broadly and more specifically for Indigenous people. Members of Indigenous communities, who provide strong role models for other aspiring scholars, will be involved as postdoctoral fellows, research assistants and graduate fellows.

Most experimental studies in the behavioral sciences rely on college students as participants for reasons of convenience, and most take place in North America and Europe. As a result, studies are only sampling from a narrow range of human experiences. The results of these studies have limited generalizability, failing to reflect the full range of mental and behavioral phenomena across diverse cultures and backgrounds. However sampling from broader populations is challenging, due to limited opportunities and access, heightened cost, and the need for specific knowledge about how to adapt research protocols to different communities. The goal of this workshop is to develop some tools and guidelines to help researchers overcome barriers to broader sampling, and to incentivize doing so through better institutional support.

The goal of this workshop is to develop tools to support and encourage increased robustness and generalizability in the experimental behavioral sciences. The meeting is dedicated to identifying and developing potential solutions to the so-called "WEIRD people" problem: the fact that most experimental behavioral science research is conducted with members of WEIRD populations (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich Democracies). The discovery that much of this research fails to generalize to broader populations and fails to capture the range of human patterned variation in thought and behavior creates a pressing need for research approaches to be more inclusive. Although there are researchers throughout the world who have developed effective models for overcoming these limitations, there are significant barriers to achieving robust and generalizable experimental behavioral research for most researchers. This workshop will bring together scholars from a range of disciplines whose research represents positive case studies of how to overcome these barriers. The participants aspire to accomplish three goals: 1) develop tools and training materials to help researchers enhance diversity in their research populations, 2) develop infrastructure solutions for connecting researchers across diverse contexts and populations, and 3) develop a set of recommendations for institutional changes to support enhancing diversity in experimental behavioral science through manuscript, grant, and tenure review.