culture bias

• Who created psychological theories and who are the

  participants in psychological studies?

  Western

  Educated

  Industrial nations

  Richer than most

  Democratic societies
• Explain why culture bias may occur

  • WEIRD is not like most of the the world’s population
  • Pre-existing beliefs and viewpoints influence data interpretation and theories
  • Understanding of human behaviour is shaped by the researcher’s perspectives and misconceptions, rather then being grounded in objective data
• Define culture bias

  When members of an ethnic group are over diagnosed because human behaviour is being judged from the lens of the clinician’s own cultural experiences and norms
• Give an example of culture bias

  A psychiatrist from one culture may misdiagnose people from a different cultural background because behaviours which one culture finds odd may be accepted or have different meanings in another culture.
• Ethnocentrism


  When researchers think their own culture or ethnic group is superior and use it as the standard for evaluating other cultures
• Ethnocentric individuals will perceive their cultural norms as the ‘correct way of living'
• Hinrich found in major psychology journals that:

  • 68% of research participants from US
  • 96% from Western industrialised nations
  • 67% of American subjects were undergraduate psychology students
• Hinrich's findings meant that a random American University student was 4,000 times more likely to be a participant in a psychology study than an individual from a non-western background
• • DSM-5 has a section that acknowledges there has been cultural bias in diagnosis in the past
  • calls attention to the clinician to understand that different cultures describe their illness in different ways
  • helps ensure diagnosis is fairer in the future
• Cochrane and Sashidharan (1995)


  • argue racism and social deprivation experienced by immigrants are likely to effect mental health
  • their behaviours/experiences which are often interpreted as abnormal
• Sugarman and Craufurd (1994)


  Found that as successive generations came and settled in the UK

  from the Caribbean, their risk of being diagnosed with schizophrenia increased
• Pinto and Jones (2008)


  • British people of African-Caribbean origin are up to 9 x more likely to receive a diagnosis than white British people
  • Rates of diagnosis of people living in African-Caribbean countries are not, which rules off genetic vulnerability
• Escobar (2012)


  There is an overinterpretation of symptoms in Black British people