Cultural Bias Flashcards
What is cultural bias?
overlooking cultural differences + looking at human behaviour from one cultures perspective
Psychology is weird
Western
Educated
Industrialised
Rich
Democratic
- makes up 5% of population
- if the norm for behaviour is set by WEIRD people then others are seen as inferior
Culture Bias in psychological research
1992, 62% of psych research done in America
96% industrialised nations
80% ppts psych undergraduate students
Ethnocentrism
Judging other cultures by the standards of our own
- others are deficient or underdeveloped
Ethnocentrism e.g.
The Strange Situation
based on western child rearing ideas which are not appropriate for assessing others
- Takahashi - Japanese children seen as insecure as less seperation
Cultural relativism
findings only true for the culture of research
Etic = behaviours across many cultures
Emic = behaviours within a culture
Imposed etic = conducting research in emic way but findings assumed to be etic
Imposed etic e.g.
Ainsworth strange situation studies behaviour inside a single culture but assumed their ideal attachment type could be applied universally
Consequences
difficult for psychologists to separate behaviours observed from context observed in
Implications
Stereotyping: Gould explained how the first intelligence tests let to the eugenics social policies in the US
- WW1 psychologists gave IQ test to army recruits
- questions were ethnocentric e.g. name US presidents
- non-US scored lowest and were deemed genetically inferior
Solutions
Reflexivity + openess about emic work to avoid imposed etic
AO3 - most classic studies
Most classic studies are culturally biased e.g. Asch (Perrin and Spencer) and Milgram (only individualist cultures)
AO3 + global media
As media has become more global, cultures have become more similiar so modern research may be more etic
