cultural bias Flashcards
limitation: a widespread problem in psychology.
E – For example, one study found that American college students are considerably more likely to be participants in psychological research than people from other groups.
E – This shows how most research is based on a culturally biased sample. This means that when researchers make universal claims, they are in fact basing these claims on culturally biased research.
limitation:Adopting an extreme position of cultural relativism is problematic.
E:Taken to its extreme, cultural relativism can mean a rejection of the idea that psychologists can ever make universal claims.
E: This rejection of universality flies in the face of many well-established findings, such as the universality of interactional synchrony or the limited capacity of short-term memory. Consequently, most researchers reject extreme cultural relativism, and instead argue researchers should seek to identify universals whilst also taking account of cultural context.
limitation: research is socially harmful.
E - For example, the findings of Yerkes’ intelligence test were used to show that all cultural groups were intellectually inferior compared to middle-class White Americans.
E - This ethnocentric research caused lasting social harm, as it fuelled racist sentiment in the US and was used to justify discriminatory immigration restrictions that lasted into the 1960s.
