“Weird” Americans: Black Friday vs. Thanksgiving
It’s undeniable. The great family holiday of Thanksgiving is losing ground, fast, to “Friendsgiving” get-togethers while “Black Friday” shopping gets bigger and earlier.
Why do we prefer Black Friday to Thanksgiving?
Because we’re “weird”
Social psychologist Jonathon Haidt writes in his book The Righteous Mind about “WEIRD” people — the people who live in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich Democracies who are very different from most of the world, and yet we are used by most psychological research studies to stand for all of humanity.
Haidt compared “weird” people to typical people elsewhere. “When asked to write 20 statements beginning with the words ‘I am,’” he said, “Americans are likely to list their own internal psychological characteristics (happy, outgoing, interested in jazz), whereas East Asians are more likely to list their roles and relationships (a son, a husband, an employee of Fujitsu).” http://outthebox.net
That makes Thanksgiving hard for “weird” peop...