cultural bias Flashcards
universality
Applying psychological findings to all humans, often
overlooking cultural differences.
ethnocentrism
Judging other cultures by one’s own standards,
leading to biased interpretations of behaviour.
cultural relativism
Understanding behaviour within its
cultural context to avoid biased generalisations.
emioc vs etic psych
Emic studies culture-specific
behaviours, while etic identifies universal behaviours across cultures
how is universaility and bias shown in henrich et al study
Joseph Henrich et al. (2010) reviewed hundreds of studies in leading
psychology journals and found that 68% of research participants came from
the United States, and 96% from industrialised nations.
Henrich et al. coined the term WEIRD to describe the group of people
most likely to be studied by psychologists - Westernised, Educated people
from Industrialised, Rich Democracies.
what does it mean if the norm is set by WEIRD people
If the norm is set by WEIRD people, those from non-Westernised, less
educated, agricultural and poorer cultures are inevitably seen as ‘abnormal,
‘inferior’ or ‘unusual.
how did Berry distiguish between emic and etic
An etic approach looks at behaviour from outside of a given culture and attempts to describe those behaviours as universal.
An emic approach functions from inside a culture and identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture.
example of imposed etic
-ainsworth and bell
-they studied behaviour
inside one culture (America) and then assumed their ideal attachment type (and the method
for assessing it) could be applied universally. but for exmaple not in japan where many were seen as insecurely attached (disprop) but mother sep was js rare
Berry argues that psychology is often guilty of an imposed etic approach - many theories,
models, concepts, etc., are sold as ‘universal’, when they really just come from one culture
what is the suggestion of cultural relativism of their research
-things they discover may only make sense from perspective of their culture
-being able to recognise this avoids cultural bias
limitations of cultural bias
(classic studies)
-asch and milgram used US white middle class
-replications in different countries caused diff results
-collectivist cultures had higher conformity
(ethnic stereotyping)
-Gould first intellegnice tests were eugenic piloted on army recurits, assumed they would know the US presidents
-african americans would recieve the lowest scores
-used as a racist disocurse
-seen as mentally unfit and feebale minded in comaprison to white people
counterpoint cultural bias
-indvidualist and collectivist split no longer apply
-Takano and OSaka foudn 14 out 15 studies that comapred japan and US have no evidence of collectivism or indivudalism
-distinction is lazy
strengths
(cultural psych)
-Cultural psych strive to avoid ethnocnetric assumptions by taking an emic approach and conducting research from inside a culture
often along side local researchers
-cross cultural tends to focus on just 2 cultures instead of large scale
-so psycholgists are mindful of the dangerous of bias and take steps to avoid
relativism vs universally eval extra
-cross culture research good as provides better understanding of the world looking at diff concepts , provide good understanding of human nature
- but not all psych aspects are culturally relavnt ekmon suggest facial exp and emotions are the same aorund the world even some features of human atatchment e.g interactional synchrony
