culture bias

• Ethnocentrism 


  Refers to particular form of cultural bias and is a belief in the superiority of one's own cultural group

  eg strange sitution is an example - refelcts only norms and values of what is sometime called Western culture
• Cultural relativism - imposed etic


  Berry drawn distinction between etic and emic approaches in study of human behvaiour

  etic - looks at behaviour from outside a given culture and attempts to identify behaviours specific to that culture - imposed etic - studied behaviour inside one culture and then assumed their ideal attachment could applied universally.

  Another example of imposed etic is how we define abnormality
• cultural relativism 


  Idea that norms and values as well as ethics and moral standards can only be meaningful and understood within specific social and cultural contexts
• Cultural bias 


  Tendency to interpret all phenonema through the lens of one's own culture ignoring the effects that cultural differnces might have on behaviour

  Cultural relativism is practiced to avoid cultural bias
• W:Classic studies


  Most influential studies in psychology are culturally bias - culture bias is feature of many classic studies of social influence

  Both Asch and Milgrams studies were conducted exclusively with US participants, replications in different countries produced different results eg Asch type experiments in collectivist cultures found significantly higher rates of conformity than original studies in the US - individualist culture.

  --> Suggests our understanding of topics such as social influence should only be applied to individualist cultures.
• S: emergence of cultural psychology

  Cultural psychology -study of how people shape and are shaped by their cultural experience

  Cultural psychologists strive to avoid ethnocentric assumptions by takinh an emic approach and concducting research from inside a culture, alongsdie local researchers and using culturally based techniques

  Cross cultural research tends to focus on just two cultures instead of larger scale studies with maybe eight or more countries/cultures

  --> modern psycholgists are mindful of dangers of cultural bias and are taking steps to avoid it
• W: Ethnic stereotyping 


  Cultural bias has led to prejudice against groups of people

  Stephen Jay Gould - IQ tests on army recruits - assumed everyone would know the names of US presidents

  --> cultural bias used to support prejudice and discrimination towards certain cultural and ethnic groups