Culture bias in psychology

• What is culture bias?

  Tendency to judge all people in terms of one‘s own cultural assumptions of THOSE cultures. Distorts judgement
• What is alpha bias in reference to culture?

  Referring to theories that assume there are real and enduring differences between cultural groups
• What is beta bias in reference to culture?

  Theories which ignore or minimise differences between cultural groups
• State an example of alpha bias in terms of culture

  • Distinction between individualistic and collectivist cultures
  • Would expect individualistic cultures to be less conformist and collectivist to be more conformist
• Describe an example of beta bias

  • Iq testing- devised by western psychologists to study intelligence in different cultures
  • Psychologists assume their view of intelligence applies to all cultures equally
  • This regarded as imposed etic, where a research method or psychological test devised by one group of people is imposed onto other groups
• What does Etic mean?

  Belief that perceptions or behaviours are shared by all cultural groups
• define ethnocentrism

  Use of own ethnic or cultural group to make judgements about other groups
• Define cultural relativism

  Idea that behaviour cannot be judged properly unless its viewed in the context of the culture from which it originates
• Define alpha bias ethnocentrism

  Ones own culture is considered to be significantly different and better, other cultures and practises are devalued
• Define beta bias ethnocentrism

  Psychologists believing that their world view from their cultural perspective is the only view- minimises differences
• Define alpha bias cultural relativism

  Assumption of real differences leads psychologists to overlook universals- behaviours in all cultures which are similar
• Define beta bias cultural relativism

  Described in the context of mental illness- Defining a behaviour as abnormal as this is relative to one culture, but it might only be abnormal in one culture and normal in another- for example a symptom of schizophrenia is hearing voices, but this might be normal for some cultures- eg definitions of abnormality
• What is an emic approach?

  One that emphasised the uniqueness of every culture by focusing on culturally specific phenomena
• evaluation of cultural bias?

  • ☹️ damage caused by cultural bias- American IQ test, African americans bottom of scale. Causes negative attitudes to be held towards those groups
  • ☺️Worldwide psychological community- researchers travel and therefore have increased understanding of other cultures. International conferences- researchers express and discuss ideas for more accurate representations
  • ☺️The bias can be dealt with using samples from different cultural groups. Researchers calculated a randomly selected american student was 4000x more likely to be selected as a pp than a non westerner
  • ☺️Indigenous psychologies- Afrocentrism counters ethnocentrism and states psychologies concerning black people must be African centred- more representative