Culture Bias AO3

• -Classic Studies

  One limitation is that many of the most influential studies in psychology are culturally-biased.Cultural bias is a feature of many classic studies of social influence. Both Asch's and Milgram's original studies were conducted exclusively with US participants (most of whom were white, middle-class students).
• -Classic Studies 2

  Replications of these studies in different countries produced rather different results. Asch-type experiments in collectivist cultures found significantly higher rates of conformity than the original studies in the US, an individualist culture (Smith and Bond). This suggests our understanding of topics such as social influence should only be applied to individualist cultures.
• +Classic Studies

  However, in an age of increased media globalisation, it is argued that

  the individualist collectivist distinction no longer applies. The traditional argument is that individualist countries value individuals and independence, whilst collectivist cultures, such as India and China, value society and the needs of the group.
• +Classic Studies 2

  However, Takano and Osaka found that 14 out of 15 studies that compared the US and Japan found no evidence of individualism or collectivism - describing the distinction as lazy and simplistic. This suggests that cultural bias in research may be less of an issue in more recent psychological research.
• +Cultural Psychology

  One strength is the emergence of cultural psychology. Cultural psychology is, according to Cohen, the study of how people shape and are shaped by their cultural experience. This is an emerging field and incorporates work from researchers in other disciplines including anthropology, sociology and political science.
• +Cultural Psychology 2

  Cultural psychologists strive to avoid ethnocentric assumptions by taking an emic approach and conducting research from inside a culture, often alongside local researchers using culturally-based techniques. Cross-cultural research tends to focus on just two cultures instead of larger scale studies with maybe eight or more countries/cultures. This suggests that modern psychologists are mindful of the dangers of cultural bias and are taking steps to avoid it.
• -Ethnic Stereotyping

  One limitation of cultural bias in psychology is it has led to prejudice against groups of people. Gould explained how the first intelligence tests led to eugenic social policies in the US. Psychologists used the opportunity of World War I to pilot their first IQ tests on 1.75 million army recruits. Many of the items on the test were ethnocentric, for example assuming everyone would know the names of the US presidents. The result was that recruits from south-eastern Europe and African-Americans received the lowest scores.
• -Ethnic Stereotyping 2

  The poor performance of these groups was not taken as a sign of the test's inadequacy but was instead used to inform racist discourse about the genetic inferiority of particular cultural and ethnic groups. Ethnic minorities were deemed 'mentally unfit' and feeble-minded' in comparison to the white majority and were denied educational and professional opportunities as a result. This illustrates how cultural bias can be used to justify prejudice and discrimination towards certain cultural and ethnic groups.
• Extra Eval

  One of the great benefits of conducting cross-cultural research is that it may challenge dominant individualist ways of thinking and viewing the world. Being able to see that some of the knowledge and concepts we take for granted are not hardwired and may provide a better understanding of human nature.

  However, it should not be assumed that all psychology is culturally relative and that there is no such thing as universal human behaviour.
• Extra Eval 2

  Research (Eman) suggests that basic facial expressions for emotions are the same all over the human and animal world. Criticisms of attachment research should not obscure the fact that some features of human attachment (such as imitation and interactional synchrony) are universal.