Culture and Gender Issues Flashcards
Describe cultural bias.
(ETHNOCENTRISM VS CULTURAL RELATIVISM)
-Culture can be defined as the values, beliefs and patterns of behaviour shared by a group of people. A variety of factors shape culture and these different factors are reflected in the differences between various cultures.
-Historically, psychology has been dominated by white, middle-class American males, who have monopolised psychology both as researchers and participants. Research findings and theories have been generalised, as if culture makes no real difference.
-If a characteristic or behaviouris found in all cultures it can be called ‘Universal’and can mean thatthe characteristic or behaviour has a GENETIC (Nature) underpinning. If not, and behaviourdoes differ between cultures, then itrelates to a NURTUREargument.
-Cultural bias is the tendency to judge people in terms of one’s own cultural assumptions. In psychology, a way to consider cultural bias is through the distinction between ethnocentrism and cultural relativism.
Describe ethnocentrism.
-Seeing the world through one’s own cultural perspective and believing that this one perspective is both normal and correct.
-Seen as inadvertent, lack of awareness that other ways of seeing things can be as valid as ones own.
-Culture can also refer to subcultures within a society such as people with different socioeconomic status or religious groups.
-For example, definitions of abnormality vary from culture to culture, Rack (1984) claims that African Caribbeans in Britain are sometimes diagnosed as mentally ill based on behaviour which is normal in their culture (eg hearing voices of ancestors but in UK we would consider them schizophrenic). This is an example of an imposed etic, which is when a technique or theory is developed in one culture and then imposed on another.
Describe culture relativism.
-Culture relativism insists that behaviour can be properly understood only if the cultural context is taken into consideration.
-According to this viewpoint, the meaning of intelligence is different in every culture. For example, Sternberg (1985) pointed out that coordination skills that may be essential to life in a preliterate society (eg motor skills for shooting a bow and arrow to hunt for food in order to survive) may be mostly irrelevant to what is considered intelligent behaviour for most people in a literature and more developed society.
-Therefore culture must be taken into account.
Describe universality.
-When a theory is defined as universal, it means it can be applied to all people (irrespective of gender and culture).
-In regard to culture, one way to achieve universality would be to employ what Berry (1969) described as derived etic. This is where a series of ‘emic’ studies take place in local settings, conducted by local researchers using local techniques therefore taking local culture (of subgroup) into account.
-Links to Blass who conducted a meta analysis of several studies both in the US and other cultures replicating Milgram’s work and concluded that people have a powerful tendency to obey authority so this may be ‘one of the universals of social behaviour’.
Define eurocentric.
Eurocentrism is defined asjudging the experiences of non-European-descended individuals(i.e. African Americans, Latinos) against a European American standard.
Define cultural relativism.
Insists that behaviour can only be properly understood if the cultural context is taken into consideration.For example Sebastian and Hernandez-Gil.
(Emic)
Define universality.
-When a theory is described as universal, it means that it can apply to all people, irrespective of culture or gender. However, this also means that it needs to include real differences.
-In relation to culture this can be done by employing a derived etic which is when a series of emic studies take place in local settings, by local researchers using local techniques, therefore taking local culture into account.
Define gender bias.
The differential treatment and/or representation of males and females, based on stereotypes and not real differences.
Define androcentrism.
Androcentrism means being centred on, or dominated by, males or male viewpoint. This can be conscious (the individual knows they are behaving this way) or unconscious. In the past more psychologists were male, and the theories they produced tend to represent a male view of the world.
Define gynocentrism.
Where the focus is centred on women, for example only using female participants in research.
Define alpha bias.
Refers to theories which exaggerate the differences between males and females.
Describe an example of alpha bias.
Freud argued that there are genuine psychological differences between men and women. His theory suggests that women are inferior as young girls suffer from ‘penis envy’ and he viewed femininity as a failed form of masculinity.
Define beta bias.
Refers to theories which ignore or minimise sex differences. These theories often assume that the findings from males can apply equally to females. For example, studies were originally done almost only on men. Now male and female participants are used in most studies, but there is normally no attempt to analyse the data to see whether there are significant sex differences.
Describe an example of beta bias.
-Sherif’s (1954, 1961) prejudice studies involved all male participants, and it was just assumed that females would respond in the same way.
-Biological research into fight or flight response has often been carried out with male participants. It was assumed that this would not be a problem as the fight or flight response would be the same for both sexes.
Whats the difference between sex and gender?
-Biological Sex comes from the sex chromosomes (X and Y) and is determined by our genes.
-Gender can therefore be something LEARNED in a culture and can be related to ‘nurture’. However, it can link to biological sex which comes from genes, so there is an issue of ‘nature’ when considering gender as an issue in psychology.
-Genderis a social construct.More than biological sex and includes feelings,attitudes and behaviours that a culture assigns to the biological sexes. (For most people, their sex matches their gender but not for everyone.)
