cultural bias

• Cultural bias - tendency to judge all people in terms of your own cultural assumptions. Means that cultural differences in behaviour may be seen as ‘abnormal’ or ‘inferior’
• Ethnocentrism – the belief that one's culture is superior to others
• strange situation is an example of ethnocentrism as it reflected norms of US culture
• Cultural relativism - one cannot judge a behaviour properly unless it is viewed in the context of the culture in which it originates
• Imposed etic - a technique or theory developed in one culture and used to study the behaviour of people in another culture e.g strange situation used outside US/UK
• Emic approach - something that applies only in one culture e.g culture bound.
• Psychologists have made reference to culture within a context of an individualist-collectivist distinction.
• Individualistic cultures are those where individuals tend to look out for themselves, whereas collectivists cultures are those where there is more emphasis on group harmony and cooperation
• Critics have suggested in the age of global communication and increased interconnectedness that a simplistic distinction of individualist-collectivist no longer applies
• Takano and Osaka (1999) found no evidence of the traditional individualist-collectivist distinction in 14 out of 15 studies comparing the USA and Japan. This could suggest that cultural bias is less an issue than it once was.
• Berry’s concept of imposed etic is a useful reminder to psychologists of the culturally specific nature of their work. However not all psychology is culturally relative and there is universal human behaviour.
• Ekman (1989) suggests basic facial expressions for emotions e.g happiness are the same all over the human and animal world.
• Ainsworth’s strange situation shouldn’t obscure the fact that some features of human attachment are universal.
• a full understanding of human behaviour requires the study of both universal and variation among groups.
• When conducting research in western cultures the pps familiarity with the general aims and objectives of scientific enquiry is assumed.
• the same knowledge and ‘faith’ in scientific testing may not extend to cultures that don’t have the same historical experience of research. This means demand characteristics may be exaggerated when working with members of the local population and this might have adverse effects on the validity of the research.
• An issue with conducting research in different cultures is that the variables reviewed may not be experienced the same way. this may affect interactions between researchers and pps.
• For example, behavioural expressions of emotions e.g aggression may produce different behaviours between cultures. In China, the invasion of personal space is normal but in the west could be seen as threatening or confrontational.
• A benefit of cross-cultural research is that it may challenge our typically western ways of thinking
• Being able to see that some of the knowledge and concepts we take for granted are not shared by other people around the world may promote a greater sensitivity to individual difference and cultural relativism
• The use of standardised tests across cultures has been criticised because they were developed using samples from one culture only (western) so their applicability to other cultures is questionable.