Cultural bias

• WEIRD participants


  westernised, educated people from industrialised, rich ,democracies
• culture bias

  68% of research participants from US

  80% are students
• ethnocentrism


  superiority of own cultural group, others seen as deficient

  strange situation reflects values of US culture
• cultural relativism


  norms and ethics only make sense in their cultural context
• universality 


  etic approach - behaviour from outside a culture

  emic approach - behaviour from inside a culture
• AO3 +


  recognition of both cultural relativism and and universals:

  • Ekman - basic facial expressions for emotions are the same all over the human and animal world
• AO3 -


  ethnic stereotyping

  • early iq tests were ethnocentric but then used as evidence that certain ethnic/cultural groups were genetically inferior - Gould

  psychological research is severely underrepresented

  • Smith and Bond - surveyed a European textbook on social psychology and found that 66% studies were American, 32% European, 2% rest of world