Culture Bias Flashcards
Whats culture bias?
-Judging another person or group by one’s own cultural assumptions or values.
-Critics argue that mainstream psychology has often ignored culture as an important influence on human behaviour, and by doing so, has mistakenly assumed that findings from studies carried out in Western culture can be interpreted as universal.
-If the norm of standard of one culture is being applied to another then any deviation will be seen as abnormal.
What’s ethnocentrism?
- Evaluating one culture according to standards from one’s own culture.
- Is a belief in the superiority of ones own cultural group.
- this is communicated through behaviours that don’t fit the western norm
Whats cultural relativism?
the theory that morals and values exist in relation to the culture which they
originatefrom – there are no absolutes.
Whats the difference between etic and emic approach? - and imposed etic
Etic approach - looks at behaviour from outside of a given culture and attempts to describe those behaviours that are universal;
Emic approach - functions from within or inside certain cultures and identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture.
Imposed - Ainsworth's research is an example of an imposed etic - she studied behaviour within a single culture (America) and then assumed her ideal attachment type could be applied
universally.
A03 - Defining cultures as individualist and collectivist
- Early attempts to distinguish between cultures were inadequate.
- In the past, when psychologists
have referred to culture they have done so within the context of the individualist-collectivist
distinction. - However, critics have suggested, that this simplistic distinction between cultures no
longer applies
-. If we consider Izjendoorn and Kroonenberg who found there
were bigger differences within cultures than there were between them. - In some countries the
intra-cultural variation is very large - This suggests that to consider
that there are two types of culture is an outdated assumption and we must be more aware of the
vast variation in cultures.
A03 - Negative impacts of culturally biased research
- Culturally biased research can have significant real-world effects by, for example, amplifying and
validating damaging 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 had a negative effect on the attitudes of
Americans’ toward this group of people, which highlights the negative impact that culturally biased
research can have.
A03 - Unfamiliarity with Research Tradition may exaggerate cultural differences
- When conducting research in Western culture the participants familiarity with the general aims
andobjectives of scientific enquiry is assumed.
-However, the same knowledge in scientific testing may not extend to cultures that do not have the same historical experience of research.
- For this reason, demand characteristics may be exaggerated when working with members of the local population (Bond and Smith1996) - and this may have an adverse effect on the validity of the research.
