Culture Bias Flashcards
What percentage of PPTs in studies come from the USA?
68%
What percent of PPTs in studies are from industrialised nations?
96%
What percentage of PPTs in studies are psychology undergraduates?
80%
What is ethnocentrism?
A form of cultural bias that believes in the superiority of one’s own cultural group.
Explain how the strange situation demonstrates ethnocentrism.
The Strange Situation – Studied attachment in babies. Type B attachment believed to be ideal in UK, and is assumed to be the ideal attachment type in all other countries. However, in Japan, type C attachment is seen as normal as mother-baby separation is rare. This means that Japanese babies are incorrectly classed as abnormal when they aren’t.
What is cultural relativism?
Theories discovered only make sense from the perspective of the culture they were created in.
What is etic?
Looks at behaviour outside the culture that they were discovered in.
What is imposed etic?
Theories from one culture applied universally (Eg: Ainsworth)
What is emic?
Looks at behaviour inside a culture and identifies behaviours specific to that culture
Explain the strength that ethnocentrisms can be countered by indigenous psychologies.
What are indigenous psychologies?
What is Afrocentrism and what does it suggest about European values?
Indigenous psychologies involve local research for local people, such as the development of different theories specifically for different countries. For example, Afrocentrism is a movement whose central proposition is that all black people have roots in Africa, and psychological theories must express African values. Afrocentrism disputes the view that European values are universally appropriate descriptions of human behaviour. It suggests that European culture devalues non-European people and are irrelevant to those of African descent. Therefore, this has led to development of theories relevant to specific cultures.
Explain the strength that we can adopt an etic approach to avoid emic.
What are the issues with emic?
Explain what Buss did in his study of mating preference to avoid emic. What does this mean for investigating universal behaviour.
Emic emphasizes cultural uniqueness by focusing on phenomena in specific cultures. However, findings may be insignificant to other cultures, preventing theories from being universal. This can be prevented by adopting an etic approach. One way to achieve this while avoiding cultural bias is to use indigenous researchers in each cultural setting. This is what Buss did in his study of mating preference. Data for the study was collected from 37 different cultures, using local researchers to ensure accurate translations. This means researchers can investigate universal behaviour while avoiding cultural bias.
Explain the limitation of cultural bias often leading to prejudice against certain groups of people.
Use the example of WW1 IQ testing and the impact on African-Americans and south eastern Europeans.
Psychologists in WW1 created the 1st IQ tests and tested them on army recruits. Many items on the test were ethnocentric and assumed, for example, that everyone would know the name of US presidents. The lowest scores were produced by south east European countries and African Americans, but instead of viewing this as a sign of the tests inadequacy, it was used to inform racist discourse about genetic inferiority. Ethnic minorities were deemed unintelligent and mentally unfit, and were denied educational opportunities as a result. This illustrates how cultural bias can lead to discrimination.
Explain the limitation of well known studies being culturally biased.
Use the example of issues with Asch and Milgram’s PPT sample and the type of culture they were from.
What did Takano and Osako argue about the individualist/collectivist distinctions relevance in today’s society?
For example, both Asch and Milgram’s original studies were conducted exclusively with US PPTs, who were mostly white and middle class. Replication of these studies in different countries produced very different results. For instance, Asch type experiments in collectivist cultures found higher rates of conformity than original US studies. (Individualist) This suggests our understanding of topics such as social influence should only be applied to individualist cultures. However, in the age of increased media globalization, it is argued that the distinction between individualist/collectivist no longer applies. Research from Takano and Osaka found that 14/15 studies comparing US and Japan had no difference individualism/collectivism, therefore cultural bias may be less of an issue in modern research.
