From unawareness to accountability

The authors argue that many researchers remain “unaware” of the WEIRD bias in developmental databases and theories. In an earlier era, such unawareness might have been understandable. In an age of global connectivity and increasingly open access, however, ignorance of these issues is no longer credible. For decades, scholars have documented how psychology’s dominant paradigms reflect narrow social worlds (Arnett, Reference Arnett2008; Henrich et al., Reference Henrich, Heine and Norenzayan2010; Nielsen et al., Reference Nielsen, Haun, Khandiwala and Keller2017). The persistence of WEIRD bias is therefore not a matter of limited knowledge but of limited accountability.

Developmental scientists today have at their fingertips decades of research on cultural diversity, epistemic injustice, and methodological colonialism. The real question is not whether researchers know about these biases, but why institutional systems continue to reward reproducing them. Journals still privilege English-language output, funding structures favor collaborations led by institutions in the Global North, and editorial boards remain demographically homogeneous. If the field remains WEIRD, it is because the political economy of scientific production continues to make WEIRDness profitable, publishable, and professionally rewarded. The task, therefore, is not to awaken awareness but to redesign the structures that sustain epistemic inequality.

Should we still seek universality?

Bard and colleagues show convincingly that theories such as Shared Intentionality and Attachment Theory cannot claim universality when built upon monocultural databases. Yet perhaps it is time to question the very aspiration to universality itself. Developmental psychology has long assumed that the highest scientific achievement is a general theory of human development. The pursuit of universality has also justified the marginalization of “deviant,” “nonstandard,” or “non-normative” developmental pathways.

Instead of endlessly broadening our theories to include more diversity under a single conceptual umbrella, perhaps we should let go of the umbrella altogether. Development is not a uniform trajectory but an ongoing negotiation between bodies, histories, and ecologies. What we need are not more universal theories, but wilder ones: frameworks that embrace multiplicity, contradiction, and situatedness as essential features of human life. The question, then, is not “how inclusive can universality become?” but “how plural can developmental science dare to be?”

Beyond five steps: Toward anticolonial praxis

The authors’ proposed “Five Steps for Increasing Inclusivity” provide a clear starting point for researchers seeking to move from WEIRD to WILD. Yet inclusivity, while important, is not synonymous with decolonization. Decolonizing developmental science requires addressing the structural and moral foundations of knowledge production, including the secular struggles that determine who gets to know and whose knowing counts.

These struggles include confronting systemic racism in academia (Carneiro, Reference Carneiro2023), the persistence of epistemic extractivism in field research, and the asymmetrical flows of citation, authorship, and credit that favor scholars and institutions in the Global North (Fricker, Reference Fricker2007; Mignolo, Reference Mignolo2011). Without acknowledging these dynamics, inclusivity risks becoming cosmetic, a way of adding diversity without redistributing power. A truly WILD developmental science must therefore cultivate epistemic justice: fair recognition of diverse ways of knowing and valuing, grounded in relationships of reciprocity rather than extraction.

This transformation extends far beyond methodological reform. It requires rethinking the politics of collaboration, authorship, and mentorship; reimagining ethical review systems that assume Western norms of autonomy; and supporting publication models that amplify voices in underrepresented languages and regions (Dimenstein et al., Reference Dimenstein, Silva, Dantas, Leite and Macedo2022). We need not just five steps but a continuous praxis of resistance against racism, the commodification of data, and the erasure of local epistemologies. Bard et al. are right to emphasize studying development in situ, through local practices and ethnotheories. Yet, even the most carefully contextualized research cannot undo structural inequities if knowledge systems remain WEIRD by design. Only through such structural commitments can the WILD vision become more than an acronym.

Let’s Go WILD makes an essential contribution to the ongoing reckoning within developmental science. Its critique of WEIRD theory-building should be widely embraced, yet the path forward will demand redistribution and a collective willingness to imagine science otherwise.