Culture bias I+D

• Culture bias refers to the tendency to ignore cultural differences and interpret all aspects of behaviour through the lens on one's own culture.
• Ethnocentrism is a type of cultural bias that assumes one's own culture is superior to other cultures and this is the correct way to behave, usually Western - behaviour that doesn't conform to this is usually seen as somehow underdeveloped
• Cultural relativism - certain things may only be understood and make sense from within the culture they were discovered in (an emic approach)

  Being able to recognise this is a good way to avoid culture bias
• Emic vs Etic

  An etic approach looks at behaviour from outside a given culture and attempt to describe the behaviour as universal

  An emic approach is researching within certain cultures and suggesting this behaviour is specific and exclusive to it
• Imposed etic is when your own cultural understanding of what is 'normal' is inappropriately applied to other cultures
• Individualistic - focussing on individual growth and achievement

  e.g. UK and US
• Collectivist - focus on communal achievement

  e.g. Japan
• Universality refers to characteristics that are applied to everyone. In culture, it means all research is assumed to apply equally to all cultures.
• Application to topic areas

  • Asch - original study was only conducted with US ppts, when replicated in the UK by Perrin and Spencer, they found only one student conformed out of 396 trials
  • average conformity rate - individualist: 25%
  • for collectivist: 37%
  • Ainsworth's Strange Situation is ethnocentric
  • only used US infants to create the 'ideal' attachment type
  • but parenting is different across cultures
  • SS only reflects US parenting norms
  • The Humanistic Approach, Zimbardo, Milgram
• Distinction between individualistic and collectivist is too simplistic

  • we now live in an age with more global communication and less differences across cultures
  • research has found in 14 out of 15 studies, no distinction between individualist and collectivist (US and Japan)
  • = culture bias is less of an issue than it once was
• Scientific racism
• Recognising what's culturally relative and what is universal is beneficial