This paper raises concerns regarding assumptions made in social scientist about the validity of universal claims made supported by samples limited to Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. The authors observe that many claims from social sciences like psychology are often supported by small studies performed on undergraduates or convenient populations. They present evidence that universal claims regarding human psychology need to include cross-cultural samples. They use perception of geometric illusions as a primary example.
The concerns this paper raises are significant. Dream studies has particularly suffered from these biases. Some of the most famous baselines in dream content studies were derived from 981 dream reports from undergraduates in the mid-20th century, which then informed the Hall / Van de Castle code manual that is seen as a standard in the literature.
One of the characteristics of WEIRD societies is their observable lack of dreaming cultures. In fact, 90% of Earth’s cultures may be termed “polyphasic”, which means they honor multiple phases of consciousness as real. In contract, WEIRD societies are “monophasic” and only honor the waking and objective phases of consciousness as real.