culture bias

• CULTURE - the rules, customs and ways of interacting that bind together members of a society
• CULTURAL BIAS - tendency to judge different cultures or individuals from our own cultural assumptions that can be biased or distorted
• CULTURAL RELATIVISM - the view that behaviour, morals and customs cannot be judged properly unless they are viewed in the context of the culture in which they originate from

  EXAMPLE OF CULTURAL RELATIVISM

  Milgram’s study into obedience was originally conducted using 40 male American participants, but then also replicated using Spanish students

  (Miranda et al. found over 90% obedience rates in Spanish students) and Australian students (where only 16% of female participants continued to the highest voltage setting). suggests Milgram’s original results were culture bound to American cultures.
• ALPHA BIAS - tendency to over exaggerate differences between cultures.

  EXAMPLE : differences are usually highlighted between individualist/collectivist cultures when the divide may not be as great as people assume. for example people assume individualist cultures conform less compared to collectivist cultures who prioritise the needs of the group. takano and Osaka reviewed 15 studies that compared the usa and Japan as individualist/collectivist and found 14/15 did not support the common view about differences in conformity suggesting that there is less of a culture divide in the world.
• BETA BIAS - a tendency to minimise of ignore differences between cultures. They do this by assuming that all people are the same and therefore it is reasonable to use the same

  theories for different cultural groups.
• ETHNOCENTRISM

  • seeing things from the point of view of ourselves and our social group. evaluating other groups through using the standards and customs of ones own culture. can lead to discrimination of other cultural groups, viewing them as 'lesser' than our own
  • EXAMPLE : Ainsworth’s Strange Situation is an example of cultural relativism suggesting that a secure attachment was characterised by moderate separation and stranger anxiety. Therefore, German mothers, whose children showed little separation and stranger anxiety ( being insecure-avoidant), were deemed as cold and rejecting.
• EMIC VS ETIC

  • emic - approach emphasises the uniqueness between individual cultures, however it means results are only significant for one specific culture
  • etic - tries to seek universal aspects of behaviour. to do this, indigenous researchers need to be used in each setting
• A03

  -Culturally biased research can have significant real-world effects. for example, amplifying and validating damaging stereotypes. The US Army used an IQ test before WWI which was culturally biased toward the dominant white majority. Unsurprisingly, the test showed that African-Americans were at the bottom of the IQ scale and this had a negative effect on the attitudes of Americans’ toward this group of people, which highlights the negative impact that culturally biased research can have.
• A03

  — Bias in research methods: Smith and Bond surveyed research in one European textbook on social psychology and found that 66% of the studies were American, 32% European and 2% from the rest of the world. A considerable amount of psychology is based on middle class academic young adults who are males. This suggests that there is almost an institutionalised cultural bias in psychology, as students would be learning about ‘universal’ behaviours that were demonstrated only in certain cultures.
• — Not all behaviours are affected by cultural bias: Although there may be differences in rates of obedience (Milgram) and conformity (Asch) between collectivist and individualist cultures, universal behaviours still exist. For example research has found that facial expressions for anger, guilt and disgust were universally recognised across all cultures. In terms of attachment, interactional synchrony and reciprocity are universal features of infant-caregiver interactions. Therefore, this suggests that to fully understand behaviour, we must look at both universal and culture-bound examples.