Culture Bias - AO3

• Individualism and collectivism


  • Individualist cultures (like the US) value personal freedom and independence
  • Collectivist cultures (like India and China) place more emphasis on interdependence and the needs of the group
• Critics suggested in this age of global communication and increased interconnection, 'lazy' and simplistic distinction between cultures no longer apply
• Takano and Osaka (1999) found 14 out of 15 studies compared USA and Japan - found no evidence of traditional distinction
• Suggests cultural bias less of an issue now
• Most influential studies in psychology are culturally biased eg in social influence whereas Asch and Milgram both did their original studies with only US participants - mostly white, middle-class students
• Replications of these studies in different cultures gave different results
• Asch type studies in collectivist cultures found higher rates of conformity than the original studies in individualist culture (Smith and Bond 1993)
• Suggests our understanding of topics like social influence should only be applied to individualist cultures
• Doing cross cultural research may challenge dominant individualist ways of thinking and viewing the world
• Being able to see that some of the knowledge and concepts we take for granted aren't hardwired (social instead of biological) may provide a better understanding of human nature
• It shouldn't be assumed that all psych is culturally relative and that there's no such thing as universal human behaviour
• Research (Ekman 1989) suggests that basic facial expressions for emotions (e.g. happiness or disgust) are the same all over the human and animal world
• Criticism of attachment research shouldn't obscure the fact that some features of human attachment like imitation and interactional synchrony are universal