cultural bias Flashcards
universality and bias
what we know about human behaviour has a strong cultural bias
ethnocentrism
particular form of cultural bias and is a belief in the superiority of ones own cultural group
US and europe have presented an ethnocentric view on human behaviour
Ainsworth and Bells strange situation is an example of
criticised as reflecting only the norms and values of western culture
conducted research on attachment types suggesting the ideal attachment type was characterised by the babies showing moderate amounts of distress when left alone bye their mother figure - secure attachment
led to misinterpretation of child-rearing practices in other countries which were seen to deviate from the american norm
example - japanese’s infants were much more likely to be classed as insecurely attached because they showed considerable distress on separation
it is likely this was because the japanese’s babies are rarely separated from their mother
cultural relativism
Berry - distinction between etic and emic approaches in the study of human behaviour
etic - looks at behaviour from outside of a given culture and attempts to describe those behaviours are universal
emic - approach functions from inside a culture and identifies behaviour that are specific to that culture
imposed etic in strange situation as they studied behaviour inside one culture (america) and then assumed their ideal attachment type and method of assessing it could be applied universally
example 2 of imposed etic is how we define abnormality
limitation
classic studies
many of the most influential studies in psychology are culturally-biased
example - both Aschs and Milgrams original studies were conducted exclusively with US participants
replication of these studies in different countries produced different results
example - Aschs experiment in collectivist cultures found significantly higher rates of conformity than the original studies in the US
suggests our understanding of topics such as social influence should only be applied to individualist cultures
limitation
ethnic stereotyping
led to prejudice against groups of people
Gould explained how the first intelligence tests led to eugenic social policies in the US
psychologists used the opportunity of WW1 to pilot their first IQ tests on 1.75 million army recruits
many of the items on the test were ethnocentric example - assumed everyone would know the names of the US presidents
result was that recruits from south-eastern europe and african americans received th slowest scores
poor performance of these groups was not taken as a song of the test inadequacy but was instead used to inform racist discourse about the genetic inferiority of particular cultural and ethnic groups
ethnic minorities were deemed mentally unorthodox in comparison to the thie majority and were denied educational and professional opportunities as a result
illustrates how cultural bias can be used to justify prejudice and discrimination towards certain cultural and ethnic groups
strength
emergence of cultural psych
cultural psychology is according to Cohen et al the study og how people shape and are shared by their cultural experience
this is an emerging field and incorporates work from researchers in other disciplines including anthropology sociology and political science
cultural psychologists strive to avoid ethnocentric assumptions by taking an emic approach and conducting research from inside a culture often alongside local researchers using culturally based techniques
cross-cultural research tends to focus on just two cultures instead of larger scale studied with maybe eight or more countries/ cultures
suggest that modern psychology’s are mindful of the dangers of cultural bias and are taking steps to avoid it
