Culture Bias

Question 1

What is Culture Bias

Answer 1

A tendency to interpret all phenomena through the lens of one’s own culture

Question 2

Universality & Bias in culture

Answer 2

Henrich - reviewed studies, found 68% research participants came from USA, 96% from industrialised countries

Arnett - found 80% research participants were undergraduate psychology students
These findings suggest what we know about human behaviour has strong culture bias

Henrich - used term WEIRD to describe people most likely to be studied by psychologists

Question 3

What is ethnocentrism

Answer 3

Judging other cultures by standards and values of one’s own culture
- Superiority of own cultural group, others seen as deficient. EG:
- Ainsworth’s strange situation - reflects only norms and values of USA culture
Suggested ideal attachment type (secure) characterised by babies showing moderate distress when left
This led to misinterpretation of child practises in other countries that deviate from USA
Led to Japanese babies described as insecure as showed more distress, but Jap babies rarely separated

Question 4

What is cultural relativism

Answer 4

Idea that norms & values can only be understood within specific social & cultural contexts

Etic
Emic

Question 5

What is Etic/Emic

Answer 5

Etic - study behaviour from outside a culture & attempts to describe those behaviours as universal

Emic - study behaviour from inside a culture, identifies behaviours specific to that culture

Question 6

Imposed Etic

Answer 6

Ainsworth’s strange situation
As they studied behaviour inside one culture (USA) and assumed it could be applied universally
Psychology often guilty of an imposed etic approach when theories aren’t universal as they are emic research

Question 7

Evaluation

Answer 7

Classic Studies - most influential psychology studies are culturally-biassed
Asch & Milgram - conducted exclusively with US participants, replications gave different results:
Asch type experiments in collectivist cultures found higher rates of conformity
This suggests our understanding in topics like social influence should only be applied to individualist cultures

Emergence of cultural Psychology
Cultural psychologists avoid ethnocentric assumptions by taking emic approach
→ this suggests modern psychologists are taking steps to avoid cultural bias

Ethnic stereotyping - led to prejudices against groups of people