Cultural Bias

• cultural bias is when there is a lack of validity or reliability due to viewing situations through one's own cultural perspective
• an emic approach looks to recognise differences between cultures
• ethnocentrism

  • judging other cultures based on your own cultural perspective.
  • believing that another culture is 'abnormal' compared to your own and believing cultural superiority of your own culture
• cultural relativism insists that behaviour can only be understood properly if the cultural context and cultural perspective is taken into account
• imposed etic is when theories are considered to be universal based on emic research conducted in one individual culture
• smith and bond

  • did a survey of european textbooks on social psychology
  • found that 66% of studies were american, 32% european and 2% from the rest of the world
  • this suggests that much of psychological research does not represent the whole population and that many cultures may go unaccounted for
  • this can be improved by selecting different cultural groups to research
• early versions of the DSM (american) ignored mental disorders that are found mainly in non-american cultures. DSM-4 acknowledged this and included a short passage on culture-bound syndromes found in other cultures aside from western culture
• culture bound syndromes

  • amok - malaysia. this is where an individual becomes erratic and irrational and causes havoc along with homicidal and suicidal actions
  • koro - china. acute and intense anxiety, with complaints in men of a shrinking penis or fear of its retraction into the abdomen and resultant death