From “boring experiments” to millions of minds

Dr Courtney Hilton explores global psychology through citizen science and shares how following his curiosity led to exciting research combining music and the mind.

Beyond WEIRD sampling

In his own words, Dr Courtney Hilton studies “how our world shapes our psychology”.

Psychology has long relied on narrow samples of research participants – overrepresenting Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. While cross-cultural research in remote societies provides a different perspective, Courtney argues that we should not dichotomise people as being either ‘WEIRD’ or ‘non-WEIRD’.

You can find systematic patterns of psychological variation just about everywhere... the environment we live and grow up in leaves a mark on how we think, feel and behave.

But conventional methods have difficulty recruiting diverse populations at scale. To overcome these limitations, Courtney turned to a different approach.

Citizen science at Harvard

Courtney was first exposed to a citizen science approach during his postdoctoral research at Harvard University.

Instead of getting students to complete “boring surveys”, he designed engaging online tests that gave participants insight into their own psychology. His team has used these tests to collect data from over 4 million people across 208 countries, spanning over 300 native languages, from all ages, racial, ethnic and socioeconomic identities.

Having access to such extensive and rich datasets was an eye-opening experience for Courtney. It inspired him to consider research questions far beyond the possibilities of standard lab studies, and it shaped the trajectory of his current work.

Today, his research is centred around designing new ways to engage research participants online with a citizen approach, using the ever-growing datasets to explore psychological variation and its relationship to social, cultural and ecological environments.

When research meets the media

Courtney’s work has taken him in many directions, but as a former musician he is especially fascinated by the different ways people perceive and experience music around the world.

His work in this space has attracted a large amount of media attention. In 2022, he published a large cross-cultural study of infant directed speech and song with his colleagues – chiefly Cody Moser, his co-first-author.

The study received widespread international media coverage with Courtney featured on the front page of the New York Times and interviewed around fifty times by journalists from around the world.

This included an appearance on NPR’s All Thing’s Considered, a program reaching millions of listeners every week.

For Courtney, who doesn’t consider himself as “naturally the most charismatic interviewee”, this experience was a trial by fire and valuable learning experience.

When he was feeling nervous, NPR journalist Michel Martin set him at ease. Reflecting on the experience, he shares one piece of advice that stuck with him:

She was very patient, and well, good at her job. After, she very kindly talked through tips and tricks, and one simple piece of advice was to really treat media interviews like you would casually talk about your research with a family member, and to practice it like that. I always found that useful!

Returning to Australia

After five years overseas, including postdoc positions at Harvard, Yale and the University of Auckland, Courtney was eager to return to Australia.

An ARC DECRA fellowship allowed him to come to Melbourne and establish an independent line of research using citizen science to study global psychological variation. The Complex Human Data Hub particularly aligned with the goals of his research program.

“It also helped that everybody seemed very nice!” he adds.

Breakthroughs in how we measure the brain

At the moment, Courtney is finishing a particularly exciting five-year study examining people’s ability to detect small differences in pitch, using data collected from 1.2 million participants through themusiclab.org.

This research led him to discover that this simple perceptual measure is a robust predictor of white matter differences in the brain.

This is significant because measuring white matter typically requires MRI scans, which are expensive, inconvenient and globally inaccessible. In contrast, Courtney’s method could potentially offer a scalable and accessible alternative.

This method, along with Courtney’s other research, reveals how citizen science and curiosity-driven research can unlock new questions that could not have been asked with conventional neuroimaging, putting brain development in a global concept.

This project encapsulates Courtney’s approach: curiosity-driven, globally minded and powered by the unique possibilities of citizen science.