culture bias

• culture bias is the tendency to judge people in terms of one’s own cultural assumptions
• alpha bias occurs when a theory assumes that cultural groups are profoundly different
• beta bias occurs when real cultural differences are ignored or minimised, and all people are assumed to be the same, resulting in universal research designs and conclusions
• ethnocentrism means to see the world only from one’s own cultural perspective, and believing that this one perspective is both normal and correct
• cultural relativism is when behaviour can be properly understood only if the cultural context is taken into consideration
• an example of ethnocentrism is ainsworth’s strange situation, as it is assumed to have the same meaning for infants from other cultures as it does for american children

  HOWEVER: ijzendoorn found that there were differences in attachment - for example german children show a higher rate of insecure avoidant behaviour