cultural bias

• Universality

  That conclusion drawn can be applied to everyone, anywhere, regardless of time, gender or culture (cultural bias threatens this)
• Cultural bias

  The tendency to judge all people in terms of your own cultural assumptions
• Cultural relativism

  The view that behaviour cannot be judged properly unless it is viewed in the context of the culture in which it originates
• Ethnocentrism

  Judging others cultures by the standards and values of our own, in its extreme form it Is the belief ones own culture is superior to others
• Emic constructs

  Applied to only one cultural group so vary from place to place

  More likely to have ecological validity as the findings are less likely to be caused by a mismatch between cultures
• Etic construct

  Construct is assumed to apply in all cultural groups (universal to all people across all cultures)

  Assumes most human behaviour is common to humans but cultural factors influence development of this behaviour.
• Cultural bias can occur when a research assumes emic constructs (behaviour specific to a single culture) are etic (universal to all cultures) = imposed etic
• Cultural bias is a tendency to ignore cultural differences and interpret all phenomena through the lens of ones own culture.
• Attachments: Ainsworths strange situation

  Original study used American, middle class, white infants and mothers so generalisability can be questioned Cultural differences in child-rearing makes results liable to misinterpretation e.g. German and Japanese samples (assumed results where etic)SS procedure may not appropriate for assessing children outside of the sample used as it is based on western childrearing ideals (ethnocentric)
• Psychopathology

  Cultural relativism with defining abnormality Deviation from ideal mental health – criteria is based on and more relevant to individualistic cultures.
• schizophrenia

  Positive symptoms (e.g. hearing voices) may be accepted in African cultures due to cultural beliefs (e.g. communication with Ancestors), meaning they are more ready to acknowledge these experiences

  Escobar (2012) – White psychiatrists may over-interpret symptoms of black people during diagnosis due to cultural differences in language and mannerisms.
• Schizophrenia

  What does cultural bias suggest about the validity of the diagnosis of SZ?

  Cultural bias reduces the validity of diagnosis as psychiatrists may impose their own cultural standards for Schizophrenia onto those from other cultures and are therefore biased towards what’s ‘normal’ for their culture (ethnocentric). Therefore, the diagnoses may not be valid across cultures.
• weakness

  Arguments have been made that western psychology has been oppressive and led to prejudice and discrimination towards minority ethnic groups e.g. Western intelligence tests were used on African-Americans who scored poorly and were deemed ‘feeble-minded’

  This illustrates how cultural bias can be used to justify prejudice and discrimination towards cultural and ethnic groups
• strength

  Equal opportunity legislation aims to rid psychology of cultural bias and racism, however we must be careful to avoid more subtle cultural biases

  Cultural bias and imposed etic is not as frequent within modern psychology and therefore the consequences of this are reduced