Culture Bias

Question 1

What is cultural bias?

Answer 1

The act of interpreting and judging behavior and psychological characteristics of one culture by holding them to standards of your own.

Cultural bias can lead to misunderstandings and misinterpretations of behaviors in different cultural contexts.

Question 2

What are some reasons why cultural bias happens?

Answer 2

• Researcher’s own cultural beliefs
• Biased research methods (e.g., unrepresented sample, unclear procedures)
• Theories developed in one culture may be inappropriately applied to others

These reasons highlight the importance of cultural awareness in research and interpretation.

Question 3

Define cultural relativism.

Answer 3

The idea that all cultures are worthy of respect and that studying another culture requires understanding how that culture perceives the world.

Cultural relativism promotes an appreciation for diversity and challenges ethnocentric views.

Question 4

In what context is cultural relativism discussed?

Answer 4

Cultural relativism discussed in the context of defining mental disorders, where behaviors that are statistically infrequent in one culture may be more frequent in another.

This can lead to misdiagnosis or misunderstanding of mental health issues across cultures.

Question 5

Give an example of a behavior that may be interpreted differently due to cultural bias.

Answer 5

Hearing voices as a symptom of schizophrenia, which is common in some cultures but may be misinterpreted in others.

This demonstrates how cultural context can influence the perception of mental health symptoms.

Question 6

True or False: Cultural bias can lead to incorrect diagnoses of mental illness.

Answer 6

True

Misinterpretation of culturally specific behaviors can result in labeling individuals as mentally ill when their experiences are culturally normative.

Question 7

Fill in the blank: Cultural bias involves judging behavior against the standards of your _______.

Answer 7

[own culture]

This emphasizes the subjective nature of cultural interpretation.

Question 8

Define ethnocentrism

Answer 8

The term used to describe the belief in the superiority of one’s own ethnic and cultural group. Our own perspective is taken as a standard by which we measure other cultures.

Question 9

What did Manson et al. (1985) find?

Answer 9

Hopi Indians have five separate illnesses that have an element of what we we would refer to as depression - even though they have no recognised illness of depression itself.

Question 10

How is Mansons research an example of cultural bias?

Answer 10

Example of cultural biases in our western understanding of mental illnesses.

Question 11

What is etic approach?

Answer 11

Looks at behaviour from OUTSIDE a given culture and attempt to describe those behaviours that are UNIVERSAL

Question 12

What is emic approach?

Answer 12

Functions from within or inside certain cultures and identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture.

Question 13

What is wrong with Ainsworth’s research?

Answer 13

Imposed etic: assuming the US based model of classifying attachment was the norm, Ainsworth imposed her own cultural understanding of the rest of the world.

Question 14

A03 One way to counter ethoncentrism…

Answer 14

• is to implement indigenous psychology; the development of different groups of theories in different countries.
• Afrocentrism is a movement whose central proposition is that all black people have their roots in Africa and that psychological theories concerning those people must be african centred and express african values.
• Afrocentrism disputes the view that European values are universally appropriate descriptions of human behaviour.
• Argues that the values and cultures of Europeans at worst devalue non-European people and at best are irrelevant to life’s/cultures of people of African decent.
• This has lead to the development of theories relevant to the lives and culture of people of African descent.

Question 15

A03 A significant risk of culturally biased research is that it can contribute to the creation or reinforcement of stereotypes.

Answer 15

• Infamous example is US army IQ test, just before the WW1
• These tests show that European immigrants fell slightly below white Americans in terms of IQ and african-americans were at the bottom of the scale, with lowest mental age
• Data from these tests had a profound effect on the attitudes held by Americans towards certain groups of people
• Therefore the consequence was enduring stereotypes concerning ethnic groups and their IQ (Gould, 1981)

Question 16

A03 Researches in psychology, like most people, travel more than they did 50 years ago.

Answer 16

• This means that they have an increased understanding of other cultures at a personal level but also at a professional level.
• Academics hold international conferences where researchers from many different countries and cultures regularly meet to discuss and exchange ideas.
• In fact this is how David Buss found his researchers in 37 different cultures.
• This means that there is much greater exchange of ideas which should reduced ethnocentrism in psychology, enable an understanding of cultural relativism and mean that real differences are identified and valued.

Question 17

A03 Cultural bias in psychology can also be dealt with by simply using studies with samples from different cultural groups.

Answer 17

• This was not the situation at the end of the last century, in 1998, Smith and Bond surveyed research in one European textbook on social psychology.
• They found that 66% of studies were American, 32% European and 2% from the rest of the world.
• This suggests that psychology findings are not only unrepresentative on a global scale but also within Western cultures and there is a pressing need for more research with samples from different cultural groups.