Cross cultural studies

• conduct cross-cultural studies to explore how cultural practices influence behaviour
• they resemble natural experiments
• allows researchers to investigate whether variations in behaviour are linked to culturally specific methods
• Milgrams research to study obedience to authority figures,it was replicated in various countries and found cultural variations

  Australia,lower

  Germany,higher,legacy of authority still high from nazi regime
• helps assess whether behaviours are innate,if a behaviour is consistent across all cultures,it suggets a genetic basis
• Cole et al


  members of Kpelle tribe in Africa to sort objects into similar groups.

  Western people sorted them into groups by categories and the tribe sorted them into functional groups(orange and knife)
• the tests and procedures are conducted in the US which might not be applicable in other cultures

  'imposed etic'
• Theres the risk of non-representative pp groups leading to broad generalisations about entire cultures or countries
• Observer bias,expectations influence observations,pp may try to please researchers by guessing desired response
• Terman


  conducted stanford-binet intelligence test,to measure IQ,but the Qs were heavily biased towards US culture creating misunderstanding

  Example of imposed etic