culture bias

• culture bias definition

  a tendency to interpret all phenomena through the lens of one's own culture ignoring the effects that cultural differences might have on behaviour
• ethnocentrism definition

  judging other cultures by the standards and values of one's own culture. In its extreme form it is the belief in the superiority of one's own culture which may lead to prejudice and discrimination towards other cultures
• cultural relativism definition

  the idea that norms and values as well as ethics and moral standards can only be meaningful and understood within special social and cultural contexts
• universality and bias (culture)

  • Henrich - reviewed hundreds of studies in psychology journals and found 68% of research ppts came from the US and 96% from industrialised nations
  • what we know about human behaviour has a strong cultural bias - not universal
  • Henrich - group of people studied by psychologist

  W - Westernised

  E - Educated people from

  I - Industrialised

  R - Rich

  D - Democracies

  • other groups seen as abnormal, inferior, unusual
• ethnocentrism

  Ainsworth and Bell - Strange situation: reflects only the norms and values of Western culture

  • conducted research on attachment types suggesting that ideal attachment was characterised by babies showing moderate amounts of distress when left alone
  • led to misinterpretation of child-rearing practices in other countries which were seen to deviate from American norm
  • e.g Japanese infants insecurely attached as they rarely separated from mother
• cultural relativism

  • Berry - distinction between etic and emic approaches in the study of human behaviour
  • etic -> looks at behaviour from outside of a given culture and attempts to describe those behaviours as universal
  • emic -> functions from inside a culture and identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture
• etic definition

  looks at behaviour from outside of a given culture and attempts to describe those behaviours as universal
• emic definition

  functions from inside a culture and identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture
• cultural relativism imposed etic

  • Ainsworth and bell example of imposed etic - behaviour inside one culture and then assumed their ideal attachment types could be applied universally
  • cultural bias in definition of abnormality
  • psychology is guilty of an imposed etic approach and argues that psychological studies are universal when they actually came about through emic research
• AO3 culture bias: limitation

  P: many of the most influential studies in psychology are culturally biased

  E: Asch and Milgram - US ppts

  replications of these studies in different countries produced different results

  E: Asch - in collectivist cultures found signif. higher rates of conformity than the original studies in individualist cultures

  L: our understanding of topics such as social influence should only be applied to individualist cultures
• AO3 culture bias: counterpoint

  P: increased media globalisation means individualist-collectivist distinction no longer applied

  E: individualist = value individuals and independence

  collectivist = value society and needs of the group

  E: Takano and Osaka - 14 out of 15 studies compared the US and Japan found no evidence of individualism or collectivism

  L: cultural bias in research may be less of an issue in more recent psychological research
• AO3 culture bias: limitation

  P: it has led to prejudice against groups of people

  E: Gould - in WW1 piloted first IQ tests on 1.75 million army recruits which were mainly ethnocentric (US presidents) = led to south-eastern Europe and African-Americans receiving the lowest scores

  E: used to inform racist discourse about the genetic inferiority of particular cultural and ethnic groups - mentally unfit and feeble-minded in comparison to white majority

  L: illustrates how cultural bias can be used to justify prejudice and discrimination towards cultural and ethnic groups