Culture Bias

Question 1

What is culture bias?

Answer 1

-when an explanation of a theory is developed in one culture and unfairly applied to other cultures

Question 2

What is ethnocentrism?

Answer 2

-when a theory is developed using the researcher’s own cultural background and then unfairly applied to other cultures

Question 3

What is cultural relativism?

Answer 3

-the view that behaviour cannot be judged properly unless it is viewed in the context of the culture in which it originates

Question 4

AO3: culturally biased research created or reinforces stereotypes

Answer 4

• the US army used an IQ test before WW1 which was culturally biased
• the test showed that African Americans were at the bottom of the IQ scale
• the data from this test had a profound effect on the attitudes held by Americans towards other groups of people

Question 5

AO3: evidence of cultural bias in research methods

Answer 5

• Smith and Bond surveyed a European textbook on social psychology and found that 66% of the studies were American, 32% European and 2% from the rest of the world
• psychological research is severely unrepresentative

Question 6

AO3: indigenous psychologies

Answer 6

• the development of indigenous psychologies can counter ethnocentrism
• Afrocentrism is a movement whose central proposition is that all black people have their roots in Africa and psychological theories concerning such people must therefore be African-centred