Culture bias Flashcards
Culture bias
A tendency to interpret all phenomena through the
“lens” of one’s own culture, ignoring the effects that cultural differences might have on behaviour
universality in research
Henrich, 2010
• 68% participants came from the USA
• 96% from industrialised nations.
Arnett (2008)
• 80% of participants were
undergraduates studying psychologist
WEIRD-Henrich et al
Western
Educated
Industrialised
Rich
Democratic
Universality-Suggests that although psychologists routinely claim to have discovered facts about human behaviour, those findings are actually based on a select group of individuals.
If the norm or standard for a particular behaviour is set by
WEIRD people, then the behaviour of people from non-westernised, less educated, agricultural and poorer cultures is going to be seen as abnormal, inferior or unusual.
Ethnocentrism
This is when researchers see and judge other cultures by the standards and values of their own cultural perspective, presuming that this is what is normal and correct.
→ Superiority of ones own culture.
→ Discrimination and prejudice
Ethnocentrism:The strange situation
Ainsworth and her colleagues suggested that the ideal attachment was characteristic by babies displaying moderate amounts of separate and stranger anxiety.
Led to a misinterpretation of child-rearing practices in other countries which were seen to deviate from American norms.
Japanese babies were more likely to be classed as insecure-resistant (Takahashi, 1986).
cultural relativism
Behaviours, norms and values, as well as ethics and moral standards, can only be meaningfully understood if we study it within it’s within specific social and cultural contexts.
→ Recognising culture bias helps to avoid it.
Cultural relativism:intelligence
• Sternberg (1985) argued that the meaning of intelligence is different for different cultures
• For example, coordination may be more valued in a pre-literate society, which is not the case for literate or
“developed” societies.
The only way to understand intelligence is to take the cultural context into account otherwise we start to devalue other cultures.
→ we might start making inferences that are not necessarily true, just based on belief
• Saying one culture is inferior in intelligence, rather than appreciating that the measure of intelligence used is not applicable to another culture.
Another culture bias example
Similarly, in Asch’s research 123 white American males were used and it was found that participants conformed to a wrong answer on average 37% of the time. It was assumed that other cultures would have similar levels of conformity, however this is not the case as collectivist cultures have been found to have higher rates than individualist (Smith and Bond, 1993).
strength-countering culture bias
One way to counter culture bias in psychology is to encourage indigenous psychologies; the development of different groups of theories in different cultural contexts. An example is Afrocentrism, a movement which suggests that because all black people have their roots in Africa, theories about them must be African-centred and express African values. It disputes the view that European values are universally appropriate descriptions of human behaviour and suggests that the values and culture of Europeans at worst devalue non-European people, and at best are irrelevant to life and culture of people of African decent. Such approaches have led to the emergence of theories that are more relevant to the lives and cultures of people not only in Africa, but also to those far removed from their African origins.
Limitation-Is culture bias still a relevant issue
However, although many of the most influential studies in Psychology have suffered from culture bias, some critics have argued that with the rise of globalisation and the media, the divide between cultures no longer applies, or is at least less prominent. For example, Asch’s results were questioned by Smith and Bond (1993), as they found evidence to suggest that collectivist cultures had a much higher rate of conformity than their individualistic counterparts.
However, more recently, Takano and Osaka (1999) compared US and Japanese results of Asch-like experiments, and in 14 out of 15 studies there was no evidence of an individualist/collectivist split. This suggests that maintaining this distinction either simplistic and lazy, as cultural differences could be more complicated than initially thought. Or that the distinction is becoming irrelevant as culture bias may be less of an issue in modern psychology.
Limitation- implications of culture bias
The conducting and reporting of culturally biased research can have significant negative real-world implications. For example, it can lead to the amplifying and validating of damaging stereotypes or even the creation of negative stereotypes. The US Army used an IQ test before WWI which was culturally biased toward the dominant white majority. Unsurprisingly, the test showed that African-Americans were at the bottom of the IQ scale, and this had a negative effect on the attitudes of Americans toward black people and people from south-eastern Europe. The data has led to enduring stereotypes concerning certain ethnic groups and their IQ, which highlights the negative impact that culturally biased research can have.
