Cultural Bias

Question 1

Define Culture

Answer 1

Rules, customs, morals and ways of interacting that bind together members of a society or some other collection of people

Question 2

Define Cultural Bias

Answer 2

The tendency to judge all people in terms of your own cultural assumptions. This distorts or biases your judgement

Question 3

Define Ethnocentrism

Answer 3

Seeing things from the point of view of ourselves and our social group. Evaluating other groups of people using the standards and customs of ones own culture

Question 4

What does sampling bias include?

Answer 4

W.E.I.R.D participants - Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic - represent 80% of study participants but only 12% of the population

Question 5

Define Etic approach

Answer 5

Looks at behaviour from the outside of a given culture, and attempts to find trends that can be generalised, universal behaviours

Question 6

Define Alpha bias and give an example

Answer 6

Theories that assume there are real and enduring differences between cultures. Thus they exaggerate the difference. For example, the distinction often made between individualist and collectivist cultures (e.g. the US and Japan respectively)

Question 7

Define Beta bias and give an example

Answer 7

Theories that ignore or minimise cultural differences. They do this by assuming that all people are the same and therefore it is reasonable to apply the same theories/methods to all cultures. For example, intelligence testing - Psychologists use IQ tests devised by western psychologists to study intelligence in many different cultures. The psychologists assume that there view of intelligence applies to all cultures equally

Question 8

Define Cultural relativism

Answer 8

The view that behaviour cannot be judged properly unless it is viewed in the context of the culture in which it originates

Question 9

Define Imposed etic and give an example

Answer 9

When constructs/findings in psychology are ‘created’ by one culture, but assumed to apply worldwide. For example, Ainsworth SS and Bowlby

Question 10

What can you do to make research less ethnocentric?

Answer 10

• Educate researcher on cultural norms
• Don’t generalise findings to all
• Varied sample
• Research carried out in the country the culture is from
• Researcher is indigenous to the culture
• Don’t assume universal norms/standards across all different cultures

Question 11

Evaluation summary (see notes in folder for full PEELS)

Answer 11

• Can have significant real world effects
• Led to the development of ‘indigenous psychologies’
• Contemporary psychologists are more open-minded and well travelled
• Way to deal with it is to recognise it when it occurs