Cultural bias Flashcards
what did Henrich do?
he reviewed hundred of studied in leading psychology journals and found that 68% of research participants came from US - and 96% from industrialised nations
Another review found that 80% of research participants were undergraduates studying psychology.
these findings suggests that what we know about human behaviour has a strong cultural bias
Henrich coined the term WEIRD - to describe the group of people most likely to be studied by psychologists (westernised, educated, industrialised, rich democracies)
if the norm or standard for a particular behaviour is set by WEIRD people - then behaviour of people from non-Westernised, less educated, agricultural and poorer cultures is seen as ‘abnormal and inferior
what is ethnocentrism?
refers to particular form of cultural bias and if a belief in the superiority of one’s own cultural group.
Ainsworth and Bell’s Strange situation is an example of this, only reflecting the norms and values of ‘western’ culture
this attachment study, identifying an ‘ideal’ attachment was characterised by babies showing moderate amounts of distress when left alone by mother - secure. -
but this leads to misinterpretation of child-rearing practices in other counties which were seen to deviate from the American ‘norm’
e.g. Japanese infant more likely to be classed as insecurely attached as they show less distress on separation - but it’s likely this finding was due to the fact that Japanese babies are rarely separated from their mother.
Cultural relativism
Berry drew a distinction between etic and emic approaches in the study of human behaviour
etic approach - looks at behaviour from outside a given culture and attempts to describe those behaviours as universal
emic - functions from inside a culture and identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture
Ainsworth and Bell’s research is imposed etic - studying behaviour inside one culture (America) and then assumed their ideal attachment type - could be applied universally
another example of imposed etic - how we define abnormality
Berry argued that psychology often guilty of imposed etic approach - arguing theories, models, concepts being universal when they came about through emic research - inside a single culture.
cultural relativism - psychologists being mindful of ‘things; they discover which may only make sense from the perspective of the culture they were discovered in - could help avoid cultural bias.
Limitation- Classic studies
Limitation - a lot of the most influential psychology studies are culturally biased. CB features in many classic studies of social influence.
e.g. Asch and Milgram’s studied conducted with US pp (most white/ middle class students) .
Replications of these studies in different countries produced different results
e.g. Asch studies in collectivist cultures found significantly higher rates of conformity than the original studies in US - an individualist culture (Smith and Bond)
Suggests our understanding of topics such as social influence should only be applied to individualist cultures.
Counterpoint
increased media globalisation - argues that individualist- collectivist distinction no longer applies.
the traditional argument that individualist counties value individuals and independence but collectivist counties such as India and China value society and needs of the group.
But Takano and Osaka found that 14 out of 15 studies that compared the US and Japan found no evidence of individualism or collectivism, describing the distinction as lazy and simplistic.
Suggests that cultural bias in research may be less of an issue in more recent psychological research.
Cultural psychology - Strength
Strength : emergence of cultural psychology
Cohen suggested that cultural psychology is the study of how people shape and are shaped by their cultural experience.
this 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 - 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 studies with may be 8 or more counties/ cultures.
Ethnic stereotyping- Limitation
limitation of cultural bias in psychology is that it’s led to prejudices 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 e.g. assuming everyone would know the names of US presidents
results of those from south easter Europe and African Americas had the lowest scores.
Poor performance in these groups was used to inform racist discourse about the genetic inferiority of particular cultural and ethnic groups
ethnic minorities were deemed ‘mentally unfit’ ‘feeble minded’ - in comparison to the white majority - they were denied educational and professional opportunities
illustrates how cultural bias can be used to justify prejudices and discrimination to certain cultural and ethnic groups.
extra
Benefits of cross cultural research is it may challenge dominant individualist ways of thinking/ viewing the world. Seeing that some of the knowledge and concepts we take for granted are not hardwire - may provide better understanding of human nature.
But it should not be assumed that all psychology is culturally relative and there is no such thing as universal human behaviour
Research by Ekman suggests that basic facial expressions for emotions are all the same in the animal and human world.
Criticisms of attachment research should not obscure the fact that some features of human attachment e.g. imitation and interactional synchrony are universal.
Things that the American Psychological Association has apologised for:
1) contributing to eugenics
2) gatekeeping -keeping people of colour out jobs of influence
3)presenting results as evidence of innate differences
4) scientific racism
5) positioning white people as ‘the norm’
