AO1

• cultural groups are profoundly different: alpha bias
• beta bias: real cultural differences are ignored or minimised and all people are assumed to be the same, resulting in universal research that mistakenly assumes all cultures are the same
• ethnocentrism: inadvertant lack of awareness that other ways seeing things can be as valid as one's own
• cultural relativism: insists behaviour can be properly understood only if the cultural context is taken into consideration therefore studies that draw their sample from only one cultural context and then generalises its findings to all people everywhe is suspect
• dealing with culture bias: recognising it when it occurs, as much psychological research is severely unrepresentative and can be greatly improved by:

  1. selecting different cultural groups to study 
  2. researchers from different cultures