Culture bias

• Cultural bias explanations 


  Many argue that psychologists only have theories that can explain the behaviour of the groups they have studied. Psychology ignores the influence of culture of human behaviour. Psychologists need to recognise the importance of cultural relativism in their research, so we can avoid cultural bias.
• what is ethnocentrism

  a cultural bias that is a belief that your own cultural group is superior to the other group. Any behaviours that don‘t fit the Western view are seen as wrong or deficient. This can lead to discrimination towards other cultures.
• what are the examples of ethnocentrism?

  schizophrenia diagnosis and the strange situation
• What is the strange situation?

  this is a study devised by Americans for Americans. It is unfair to use a test made by one culture on another, as some cultures have lower levels of secure attachment.
• What is the schizophrenia diagnosis?

  African-American and English people of Afro-Caribbean origin are more likely to be diagnosed with SZ than white people. This shows that there is cultural bias in diagnosis.
• what is cultural relativism?

  when norms, values and morals can only be meaningful and understood within specific social and cultural contexts.
• what are examples of cultural relativism?

  deviation from social norms, conformity and obedience
• conformity and obedience explanation

  Studies like Asch and Milgram are assumed to explain conformity and obedience for all people across he world, although they just used white American males. Research by Kilham and Mann found very different results when they replicated the studies in other parts of the world.
• deviation from social norms explanation

  social norms vary a lot between different cultures and time periods. EG: hearing voices in some cultures is a positive thing, but is a sign of mental illness in others. It is difficult to judge people living in one culture when one has norms of a different country from which they originated from.
• what is the ethnocentrism and cultural bias link?

  Berry found 2 ways of studying behaviour: Etic and Emic approach.
• what is the Etic approach?


  this looks at behaviour outside of a given culture.
• what is an imposed Etic?

  this is imposing western beliefs on people from other cultures of belief systems.
• what is an emic approach?

  this looks at behaviours from inside a given culture.
• what is the cultural bias positive?

  it is possible that some behaviours are universal, so cultural relativism isn’t an issue
• explain the positive?

  Ekman suggests that basic expressions for emotions like disgust and happiness are universal, so they can be studied without the problem of cultural relativism.
• what is the negative?

  there are methodological issues
• explain the methodological issues (negative)

  Western people are typically more familiar with the research process. Westerns usually have faith in the sciences which is assumed that all cultures are made aware of, but this is not always the case.