Psychology and cognitive science experiments have been rightfully criticized because they mainly involve subjects coming from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) countries. The demographic composition of the standard experimental subject pools is far from being a trivial detail, as many cognitive processes have been shown not to replicate across non-WEIRD cultures. Thus, at ICN we propose conceiving research paradigms that can be applicable world-wide, to all people regardless of educational background, the economic substrate of their society, their income level and their social organization.

The ICN is not a society, nor a lucrative organization or research sponsor of any kind. Rather, it is a custom network of researchers from different cultures who want to work together in good faith, knowing that the ethical and scientific principles of multicultural research will be respected. Its current goals are simple:

1. Facilitate and expand non-WEIRD research.

2. Do so collaboratively, across multiple countries and cultures.

3. Disseminate research results.

Future goals of the ICN include:

• The creation of MOOCs or other online educational tools to provide the community with the necessary skills to conduct non-WEIRD research.

• Organization of seminars and small conferences for its members.

• Creation of a repository with tools for conducting efficient online/offline non-WEIRD research.

The ICN was born in late 2021, but its gestation started with the eruption of COVID-19. Back then, 20 senior and junior researchers from over 10 countries across 4 continents decided to coordinate and execute multicultural behavioral experiments regardless of the evident contextual limitations. Conducting real multicultural research under these conditions didn't just pose technical challenges, but also important scientific, epistemological and deontological questions that went far beyond simply running an experiment online. The ICN was thus created to capitalize on the effort made when dealing with these issues, so that the know-how and the collaborative links that were built during that time would serve to the execution of efficient, reproducible future research endeavors.

There is much you can read if you want to see what's up with non-weird research! These are just a nice place to start:

• Henrich, J.; Heine, S. J.; Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world?, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Cambridge University Press, 61–83.

• Henrich, J.; Boyd, R.; Bowles, S.; Camerer, C.; Fehr, E.; Gintis, H.; McElreath, R. (2001). In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies, American Economic Review, Vol. 91, No. 2, 73–78.

• Barrett HC. Towards a Cognitive Science of the Human: Cross-Cultural Approaches and Their Urgency. Trends Cogn Sci. 2020 Aug;24(8):620-638. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2020.05.007. Epub 2020 Jun 10. PMID: 32534836.

• Marc Oliver Rieger, Mei Wang, Thorsten Hens (2014) Risk Preferences Around the World. Management Science 61(3):637-648.

• l'Haridon, O. and Vieider, F.M. (2019), All over the map: A worldwide comparison of risk preferences. Quantitative Economics, 10: 185-215.

• Ruggeri, K., Alí, S., Berge, M.L. et al. Replicating patterns of prospect theory for decision under risk. Nat Hum Behav 4, 622–633 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0886-x