Cultural Bias Flashcards
Define culture.
Values, beliefs and patterns of behaviour shared by a group of people.
What is cultural bias?
The tendency to ignore cultural differences and interpret all phenomena through the ‘lens’ of ones own culture.
Define ethnocentrism.
Judging other cultures by the standards ofones own culture.
What is cultural relativism?
The idea that norms can only be understood within specific cultural context.
Describe and explain one example of ethnocentrism.
Ainsworth’s strange situation identified attachment types based on anxiety shown after separation.
It considers any behaviour which does not conform to American expectations as deficient or underdeveloped.
This means that it is not an appropriate measure of attachment type for other cultures as it suffers from ethnocentrism.
How does Asch’s study show cultural relativism?
He only studies people in America and then assumed that everyone would conform to the same extent.
Therefore his research is only relevant to American culture.
What is an emic approach?
It functions from within a culture and identifies behaviours specific to that culture.
Describe an etic approach.
Looks at behaviour from outside of a given culture and attempts to describe universal behaviours.
What is imposed etic?
Studying behaviour from a single culture and assuming it can be applied universally.
Define universality.
Conclusions can be applied to everyone, anywhere regardless of culture.
Evaluate cultural bias in regards to cultural relativism vs universality.
It should not be assumed that all psychology is culturally relative and that there is no universal behaviour.
Example - research shown basic human emotions e.g. happiness or disgust are the same in humans and animals universally.
Therefore a full understanding of human behaviours requires both perspectives being considered.
Culture bias may not be as big of an issue as we think.
What are WEIRD participants?
Westernised, educated people from industrialised, rich democracies.
How could you evaluate cultural bias?
Ethnocentrism still present in psychological research - Ainsworth.
Presence of cultural relativism - Asch.
Evidence for universality.
