Cultural bias

• Because psychology has developed in western countries, psychologists would typically study those that were available i.e people from their own culture
• historically there hasn't been much other research to compare peoples behaviour of different cultures
• Researchers assumed that people's behaviour in western cultures would be the same as those in other cultures
• Non-western cultures were considered more primitive and so less worthy of study
• Researchers that did want to carry out cross cultural research may have lacked the resources and time
• Etic research is research carried out in one culture i.e findings are specific to the behaviour of one culture but they are then generalised to other cultures which have not been studied.
• in order to create general rules on behaviour psychologists would have to take samples of all populations they rarely do this. And so if they still generalise the findings they may be guilty of an imposed etic.
• Ethnocentric research is when our own culture is taken as the norm, which other cultures' behaviour is then judged against
• Asch study on conformity assessed participants willingness to change their answers to a simple line study in response to hearing confederates give the wrong answer
• Asch's study showed etic bias because it only studied conformity in American participants but asch then generalised the findings to groups that hadnt studied. Future research showed cultural variations in conformity rates
• Culturally biassed research can lead to culturally biassed theories, which is an issue as it can lead to psychologists making claims that aren't actually true.
• cochrane found that african-caribbean individuals in the UK were 7 times more likely than the white people to be diagnosed with schizophrenia
• cochrane found that african-caribbean individuals in the UK were 7 times more likely than the white people to be diagnosed with schizophrenia. The rates of schizophrenia are no higher in the Caribbean than they are in England which suggests


  that they have not got a genetic disposition to the disorder. Therefore it could be the result of culturally biassed assumptions influencing how we interpret people's behaviour. It seems all peoples behaviour is judged against norms for the white population regardless of where they are originally from.
• There are issues with cross-cultural research as well, as even with a translator it can be difficult to interpret what people say and do which can lead to us misinterpreting behaviour
• In addition research may still be ethnocentric if the behaviour is then judged against the researcher's own culture.
• Because cultural bias is not usually intentional it can be difficult to prevent
• to prevent cultural bias cultural relativism should be recognised
• To prevent cultural bias samples should be representative of all the groups in which you intend to generalise the findings to.
• To prevent cultural bias berry suggested that research should be carried out in a meaningful context with local researchers from the culture being studied to avoid the problems of an imposed etic.