Culture Bias

• what is a culture

  the beliefs & customs that a group of people share, such as child rearing practices
• what is culture bias

  The act of interpreting and judging behaviour and psychological characteristics of one culture, by holding them to the standards of your own culture
• give an example of culture bias

  - biased samples

  - when researchers have assumed universality
• what is universality


  the idea that a characteristic, theory or piece of research can apply to all = often culture bias
• what evidence is there that psychology has culture bias

  in 1992: 64% of psychology researchers were American
• what did the research into psychology from one textbook find (%)

  Smith and Bond report:

  66% of studies were American

  32% were European

  2% from the rest of the world
• what does Smith and Bond's report show

  98% of the studies were from Westernised cultures = the white American ideals were applied to all human behaviour, claiming the results to be universal:

  its a culture bias to assume all people's behaviour can be explained by these limited samples
• give some examples of culture bias in research/theories

  - definitions of abnormality: normal in 1 = abnormal in another

  - diagnosis of Sz

  - Strange situation: secure attchment as norm

  - gender - Kohlberg theories as universal & Mead study

  - social influences: Asch study, male students applied to all
• why is culture bias an issue

  - results & conclusions from research that is based only in 1 culture are often only relevant for that culture = the conclusions won't generalise to other cultures

  - if the 'norm' for a behaviour is only judged from the viewpoint of one culture = leads to behaviour that deviats from this standard being viewed as abnormal
• what is ethnocentrism


  a form of culture bias that believes one cultural group is superior to all other groups or cultures
• what does ethnocentrism lead to in psychological resarch

  the belief that any behaviour that doesn't conform to the dominant model (usually Western) being seen as deficient or abnormal
• what is cultural relativity


  (opposite of ethnocentrism)

  a person's beliefs, values and practices should be understood based on that person's own culture, rather than against the criteria of another culture
• what are the 2 different approaches to research

  + EMIC approach

  - ETIC approach
• what is an EMIC approach

  studies cultural groups from within and identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture
• what is an ETIC approach

  looks at behaviour from the outside of a given culture and attempts to describe behaviours that are universal
• what is an imposed ETIC - example

  where a culture-specific idea is wrongly imposed/applied to another culture = cultural bias

  e.g: Ainsworth's Strange Situation
• what types of culture bias are found from the Strange Situation - explain

  - Imposed etic = created the types of attachment from Americans then applied to all (universal)

  - Ethnocentrism = assumed secure attachment is the only desirable type, when other cultures (Germany) shared other types as having higher rates
• explain how IQ/intelligence has culture bias

  some resarch has shown that African Americans performed lower on an IQ test than White Americans

  this was used to provide scientifc credibility to racism and discrimination of these cultures
• give another example of culture bias

  IQ test for intelligence was designed by white, Western, middle class males and it was assumed to measure intelligence in all people
• what types of culture bias does the IQ test show - other explanation

  imposed etic = it was developed by 1 culture and was assumed to apply to all

  ethnocentrism = the interpretation of African Americans as being less intelligent and inferior

  However the type of questions are not represntative of their intelligence, as it's using another cultures baseline for what determines intellect
• what implications did this lead to

  Research support for racism in 1900s = led to program of forced sterilisation for African Americans based on IQ score
• give examples where behaviour is culturally relative

  Ekman established that basic facial expressions for emotions have universality, also the notion of interacional synchrony is thought to be a universal aspect
• explain what this suggests

  therefore it shouldn't be assumed that ALL behaviour is culturally relative and that no universal behaviours exist:

  to truly understand behaviour we have to consider that some behaviours may be universal and some may have cultural relativity
• what is an advantage of increasing awareness of cultural bias

  + practical applications:

  identifying possible issues has increased our understanding of the impact of cultural differences & culture specific behaviours, which has helped to reduce misdiagnosis of mental illness by updating the DSM:

  such as including a section of culturally bound syndromes that are specific to certain cultures
• explain how this is a strength

  + resulted in psychology reducing the charges of 'scientific racism', in addition to ensuring research/theories have greater validity and applicability to a range of people
• what are other weaknesses (already mentioned)

  - bias in research and sampling: Smith and Bond's report on research into psychology = demonstrated how the majority of research is conducted on Westernised populations

  - significant consequences from having culture bias in research: IQ test's contraversial history & support for eugenics