culture bias Flashcards
A01: What is culture bias?
A tendency to interpret phenomena through the lens of ones own culture, ignoring the effects that cultural differences might have on behaviour
A01: What is ethnocentrism?
Judging other cultures by the standards and values of one’s own culture. In its extreme form it is the belief in the superiority of one’s own culture which may lead to prejudice and discrimination towards other cultures
what is the term that Hendrich coined and what does it stand for?
WEIRD , which is used to describe the group of people most likely to be studied by psychologists –
Westernised, Educated people from Industrialised, Rich Democracies.
A01: what is cultural relativism?
The idea that norms and values, as well as ethics and moral standards, can only be meaningful and understood within specific social and cultural contexts
A01: define imposed etic
An etic approach looks at behaviour from outside of a given culture and attempts to describe those behaviours as universal.
A01: emic approach
An emic approach functions from inside a culture and idenifies behaviours that are specific to that culture.
example of etic approach
Ainsworth and Bell’s research is an example of an imposed etic - they studied behaviour inside one culture (America) and then assumed their ideal attachment type (and the method for assessing it) could be applied universally - STRANGE SITUATION
Example of emic
Bartiltt (1932) memory experiment. He mentioned the abilities of Swai herdsmen to recall individual characteristics of their cattle, explaining that Swai culture revolves around possession and care of cattle.
example of culture relativism
- The meaning of intelligence is different in every culture.
Strenberg (1985) pointed out that coordination skills may be essential to live in pre-literal society (e.g for shooting a bow or arrow) may be mostly irrelevant to intelligent behaviour for most people in literate and more developed society (e.g UK or America)
What can be concluded from Strenberg’s study on culture relativism?
- Therefore the only way we can understand intelligence is to take cultural context into account.
- If not- we tend to devalue other culture and make inferences about them that might be correct.
- E.g. that they are not as intelligent when actually its just the measure of intelligence being used is not applicable for that particular culture.
what is a limitation of culture bias in regards to influential studies?
P : One limitation is that many of the most influential studies in psychology are
culturally-biased.
EE: Cultural bias is a feature of many classic studies of social influence.
E.g. both Asch’s and Milgram’s original studies were conducted exclusively with US participants (most white, middle-class students).
Replications of these studies in different countries produced quite different results.
E.g. Asch-type experiments in collectivist cultures found significantly higher rates of
conformity than the original studies in the US, an individualist culture (e.g. Smith and Bond 1993).
L: This suggests our understanding of topics such as social influence should
only be applied to individualist culture
what is a counterpoint to show collectivist individualist are not so different
P: counterpoint
EE: However, in an age of increased media globalisation, it is argued that the individualist-collectivist distinction no longer applies.
The traditional argument is that individualist countries (US) value individuals and independence, whilst collectivist cultures (India, China) value society and the needs of the group.
However, Takano and Osaka (1999) found that 14 out of 15 studies that compared the US and Japan found no evidence of individualism or collectivism - describing the distinction as lazy and simplistic.
L: This suggests that cultural bias in research may be less of an issue in more recent psychological research.
what is a strength of culture bias
P: One strength is the emergence of cultural psychology.
EE: Cultural (sometimes multicultural) psychology is, according to Cohen (2017), the study of how people shape and are shaped by their cultural experience.
This is an emerging field and incorporates work from researchers in other disciplines including anthropology, sociology and political science.
Cultural psychologists strive to avoid ethnocentric assumptions by taking an emic approach and conducting research from inside a culture, often alongside local researchers using
culturally-based techniques.
Cross-cultural research tends to focus on just two cultures instead of larger scale studies with maybe eight or more countries/cultures.
L: This suggests that modern psychologists are mindful of the dangers of cultural bias and are taking steps to avoid it, is not much of an issue now.
what is a limitation of culture bias in regards to ethnic stereotyping?
P: One limitation of cultural bias in psychology is it has led to prejudice against groups of people.
EE: Gould (1981) explained how the first intelligence tests led to eugenic social policies in the US.
Psychologists used the opportunity of World War I to pilot their first IQ tests on 1.75 million army recruits. Many of the iterns on the test were ethnocentric, e.g. assuming everyone would know the names of the US presidents.
The result was that recruits from southeastern Europe and African-Americans received the lowest scores. The poor was instead used to inform racist discourse about the genetic inferiority of particular cultural and ethnic groups.
Ethnic minorities were deemed “mentally unfit and ‘feeble-minded’ in comparison to the white majority and were denied educational and professional opportunities as a result.
L: This illustrates how cultural bias can be used to justify prejudice and discrimination towards certain cultural and ethnic groups.
what is a strength of culture bias in regards to relativism and universality?
P: One of the benefits of conducting cross-cultural research is that it may challenge dominant individualist ways of thinking and viewing the world.
EE: Being able to see that some of the knowledge and concepts we take for granted are not hardwired (le. social rather than biological) may provide a better understanding of human nature.
However, it should not be assumed that all psychology is culturally relative and that there is no such thing as universal human behaviour.
Research (eg Ekman 1989) suggests that basic facial expressions for emotions (such as happiness or disgust) are the same all over the human and animal world. Criticisms of attachment research should not obscure the fact that some features of human attachment (such as imitation and interactional synchrony) are universal
L: This suggests a full understanding of human behaviour requires both, but for too long the universal view dominated.
