cultural bias Flashcards
what is cultural bias?
a tendency to interpret all phenomena through the lens of one’s own culture, ignoring th effects that cultural differences might have on behaviour
evidence for cultural bias in participants of psychological research: henrich et al. (2010)
- reviewed hundreds of studies in leading psychological journals
- 68% of research participants came from the US
- 96% were from industrialised nations
evidence for cultural bias in participants of psychological research: arnett (2008)
- 80% of research participants were undergraduates studying psychology
- what we know about human behaviour has a strong cultural bias
who is most likely to be studied by psychologists? (henrich et al.)
WEIRD: westernised, educated people from industrialised, rich democracies
what is the effect of most pyschological research being done by a specific demographic?
if the norm or standard for a particular behaviour is set by WEIRD people, then the behaviour of people from non-westernised, less educated, agricultural and poorer cultures is inevitably seen as ‘abnormal’, ‘inferior’, or ‘unusual’
what is ethnocentrism?
- judging another culture solely by the values and standards of one’s own culture
- in its extreme form, it is the belief in the superiority of one’s own culture which may lead to prejudice and discrimination towards other cultures
what is an example of ethnocentrism in research? (strange situation)
- criticsed as reflecting only the norms and values of ‘western’ culture
- they conducted research on attachment type, suggesting that ‘ideal’ attachment was characterised by babies showing moderate amounts of distress when left alone by their mother-figure (secure attachment)
- however, this led to misinterpretation of child-rearing practices in other countries which were seen to deviate from the american ‘norm’
- eg. japanese infants were much more likely to be classed as insecurely attached because they showed considerable distress on separation (takahashi 1986)
> it is likely that this finding was due to the fact that japanese babies are rarely separated from their mother
what is cultural relativism?
the idea that norms, values, ethics and moral standards can only meaningful and understood within specific social and cultural contexts
what did berry (1969) suggest?
- a distinction between etic and emic approaches in the study of human behaviour
- that psychology has often been guilt of an imposed etic approach, arguing that theories, models, concepts etc. are universal when they actually came about through emic research inside a single culture
- the suggestion is that psychologists should be much more mindful of the cultural relativism of their research - the things they discover may only make sense from the perspective of the culture within which they were discovered and being able to recognise this is one way of avoiding cultural bias in research
what is an etic approach?
looks at behaviour from outside of a given culture and attempts to describe those behaviours as universal
what is an emic approach?
functions from inside a culture and identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture
what is an example of imposed etic?
- ainsworth and bell’s research
- they studied behaviour inside one culture (america) and then assumed their ideal attachment type (and the method for assessing it) could be applied universally
ethnocentric intelligence testing (brislin 1976)
- intelligence tests are an illustration of ethnocentrism and imposed etic
- such tests often involve completing tasks under time pressure
- questions validity of the notion of ‘mental quickness’ in relation to intelligence
ethnocentric intelligence testing (wober 1974)
- baganda people of uganda characterise intelligence as slow, careful and deliberate thought
- might view ‘speed of thought’ as thoughtlessness or rashness
cultural bias in definitions of abnormality (lefley and pedersen 1986)
- european/american ideas about what it means to be mentally healthy are not necessarily shared by the rest of the world
- clinicians in the US and europe regard characteristics such as self-sufficiency, independence, goal-orientated behaviour and an internal LOC as indicators of mental health
- individuals who demonstrate the opposite are often seen as less healthy, even though these characteristics might be perceived more positivly in other parts of the world
evaluation: most influential studies in psychology are culturally-biased
- cultural bias is a feature of many classic studies of social influence
- eg. asch and milgram’s original studies were conducted exclusively with US participants (most of whom were white, middle-class students)
- replications of these studies in different countries produced different results
- eg. asch-type experiments in collectivist cultures found significantly higher rates of conformity than the original studies in the US, which is individualist (smith and bond 1993)
- this suggests our understanding of topics such as social influence should only be applied to individualist cultures
evaluation: in an age of increased media globalisation, individualist-collectivist distinction no longer applies
- traditional argument is that individualist countries (eg. US) value individuals and independence, whilst collectivist countries (eg. india, china) value society and the needs of the group
- this suggests that cultural bias in research may be less of an issue in more recent psychological research
evaluation: individualsm-collecitivism is outdated (takano and osaka 1999)
14/15 studies that compared the US and japan found no evidence of individualism or collectivism, describing the distinction as lazy and simplistic
evaluation: emergence of cultural psychology (cohen 2017)
- cultural psychology is the study of how people shape and are shaped by their cultural experience
- this is an emerging field and incorporates work from researchers in other disciplines eg. anthropolgy, sociology and political science
- cultural psychologists strive to avoid ethnocentric assumptions by taking an emic approach and conduting 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 studies with 8 or more countires
- this suggests that modern psychologists are mindful of the dangers of cultural bias and are taking steps to avoid it
evaluation: cultural bias in psychology has led to prejudice against groups of people (gould 1981)
- first intelligence tests led to eugenic social policies in the US
- psychologists used the opportunity of WW1 to pilot their first IQ tests of 1.75 million army recruits
- many of the items of the test were ethnocentric eg. assuming everyone would know the names of the US presidents
- the result was that recruits from south-eastern europe and african-americans received the lowest scores
- the poor performance of these groups was not taken as a sign of the test’s inadequacy but was instead used to inform racist discourse about the genetic inferiority of particular cultural and ethnic groups
- ethnic minorities were deemed ‘mentally unfit’ and ‘feeble-minded’ in comparison to the white majority and were denied educational and professional opportunities as a result
- this illustrates how cultural bias can be used to justify prejudice and discrimination towards certain cultural and ethnic groups
evaluation: relativism vs. universality
- one of the benefits of conducting cross-cultural research is that it may challenge dominant individualist ways of thinking and viewing the world
- being able to see that some of the knowledge and concepts we take for granted are social rather than biological may provide a better understanding of human nature
- however, it should not be assumed that all psychology is culturally relatively and that there is no such thing as universal human behaviour
- criticisms of attachment research should not obscure the fact that some features of human attachment (such as imitations and interactional synchrony) are universal
evaluation: universal human behaviour (ekman 1989)
basic facial expressions for emotions, such as happiness or disgust are the same all over the human and animal world
