Cultural Bias Flashcards
Ethnocentrism
when the psychologist doing a study takes their culture as the norm and then compares other cultures to their own.
Cultural relativism
the idea that cultural norms and values are culture specific and no one culture is superior to another culture.
Imposed etic
where a tool/construct from one culture is applied inappropriately to another culture.
Emic approach
An approach that uses an insider’s perspective that looks at the beliefs, values, and practices of a particular culture from the perspective of people who live within that culture.
AO1s - western bias in research
- Most of traditional psychology represents a Western bias, as most psychologists are trained in the west. This means that most research techniques have a basis in the western world.
Westernised, Educated people from
Industrialised, Rich Democracies. (WEIRD)
- If the norm is set by this particular group of people, then the behaviour of people from non-western, less educated, agricultural or poorer countries is inevitably seen as “abnormal” or “inferior”, leading to cultural bias.
Alpha bias - cultural
over exaggerating the difference between cultures.
We would expect individualistic cultures to be less conformist than collectivist cultures, as they don’t work for the group norms.
Beta bias - cultural
theories that ignore/minimise cultural differences.
The view that all people are the same and therefore its reasonable to use the same theory/method on all cultures.
Beta bias example - iq testing .
- Psychologists use IQ tests devised by Western Psychologists to study intelligence in many cultures, therefore the view of intelligence applies to all cultures equally.
• However Western societies state intelligence lies within the person, whereas collectivist cultures see intelligence as a functional relationship depending on shared knowledge between the individual and the society.
• Therefore if a western IQ test is used on a non-western individual then they are more likely to appear less intelligent.
• This is IMPOSED ETIC – a research tool made in one culture imposed on another culture.
Also ETHNOCENTRIC
AO2/3 EXAMPLE - Gender Mead’s research (beta bias etc)
Impose etic, cultural relativism, BETA BIAS:
she created a tool suitable to measure gender in one culture (western) and expected it to work in other cultures. Her research was also ethnocentric because it assumed that the western view of men (aggressive) was the norm and the same everywhere.
AO2/3 example schizophrenia:
BETA BIAS:
the diagnosis of schizophrenia doesn’t take into account cultural differences, hearing voices is classed as a positive symptom of schizophrenia and classed as negative in western society, however it is considered positive and desirable in Afro-Caribbean cultures, leads to a cultural bias as more Afro-Caribbean people are diagnosed with SZ.
AO2/3 - Asch’s line study
BETA BIAS, Imposed etic, ethnocentric
only used male, American students and used the results from these participants to generalise his findings, even though it is argued that this is not reflective of universal human behaviour - research is ethnocentric. The United States is a individualist culture and holds strong imperialist values which could suggest that they are highly likely to have a higher conformity rate due to differences in values and the concept of morals compared to collectivist cultures, accurate generalisation is not possible without a larger, more diverse sample size. However, this could risk imposed etic as cultural differences could mean that this tool is ineffective at measuring conformity in non-western and other western cultures.
AO3 discussion - indigenous researchers
Encourage indigenous psychologists that develop theories in different countries. Afrocentrism is a movement whose central proposition is that all black people have their roots in Africa and that psychological theories concerning such people must by African-centred and must express African values.It suggests that values and culture of Europeans at worse devalue non-European people, and at best are irrelevant to the life and culture of people of African descent.
