Culture bias

Question 1

What do critics argue about mainstream psychology?

Answer 1

They ignore cultural differences and studies that are carried out in western cultures should not be generalised as any differences based on cultures are considered abnormal

Question 2

How can culture be defined?

Answer 2

The values, beliefs and patterns of behaviour shared by a group of people

Question 3

What is cultural bias?

Answer 3

The tendency to judge people in terms of one’s own cultural assumptions

Question 4

What is ethnocentrism?

Answer 4

Viewing the world from only one’s own cultural perspective and believing that that perspective is both normal and correct

Question 5

What is ethnocentric research?

Answer 5

Research centred around one cultural group

Question 6

What type of cultural bias is Ainsworth’s strange situation an example of?

Answer 6

Ethnocentrism

Question 7

What is a solution for ethnocentric research?

Answer 7

Cultural relativism

Question 8

What is cultural relativism?

Answer 8

Regarding the beliefs, values and practices of a culture from the viewpoint of that culture itself, treating each culture as unique and worthy of study

Question 9

What is an emic construct?

Answer 9

One that is applied to only in one cultural group, so they vary between cultures

Question 10

What is an example of an emic?

Answer 10

Research of African culture by African researchers in Africa

Question 11

What is an emic construct more likely to have?

Answer 11

Ecological validity as the findings are less likely to be distorted

Question 12

When can culture bias occur?

Answer 12

When a researcher thinks that an emic construct (behaviour specific to a single culture) is actually an etic (behaviour universal to all cultures)

Question 13

What is an etic construct?

Answer 13

A theoretical idea that is assumed to apply in all culture groups so they are universal and are factors that hold across all cultures

Question 14

What do etic constructs assume?

Answer 14

Most human behaviour is common to humans but that cultural factors influence the development or display of this behaviour

Question 15

How is strange situation culturally biased?

Answer 15

• The procedure is not appropriate for assessing children from non-US or UK populations as it is based on Western childrearing ideals.
• The original study only used American, middle-class, white, home-reared infants and mothers and therefore it lacks generalisability.

Question 16

What did Nobles argue (1976)?

Answer 16

Western psychology as been a tool of oppression and dominance. Cultural bias has also made it difficult for psychologists to separate the behaviour they have observed from the context in which they observed it

Question 17

How can we try and reduce culture bias?

Answer 17

The equal opportunity legislation aims to rid psychology of cultural bias and racism

Question 18

In different cultures, variables may not be experienced in the same way. How can this be overcome?

Answer 18

operationalisation of variables