Culture bias ID Flashcards
Cultural 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
Ethnocentrism
judging others cultures by the standards and values of one’s own culture
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
Culture
consists of the values, beliefs, systems of language, communication, and practices that people share in common and that can be used to define them as a group
Universality
Believing that some behaviours are the same for all cultures.
What did Henrich et al find?
68% of research participants came from the US, and 96% from industrialised nations. He used the term WEIRD to describe these people
What does WEIRD stand for?
Westernised, Educated people from Industrialised, Rich Democracies
What did Arnett find?
found that 80% of research participants were undergraduates studying psychology
Ainsworth and Bell’s strange situation has been criticised for only reflecting western n&v.
- Research on attachment type
- ‘Ideal’ attachment aspects typical of ‘secure attachment’
- Misinterpretation of attachment in other countries
- Japanese infants were likely to be insecurely attached (Takahashi)
What did Berry make a distinction between whilst studying cultural relativism?
etic and emic approaches
etic approach
- Looks at behaviour from outside given culture
- Attempts to describe behaviour as universal
emic approach
- Functions from inside a culture
- Identifies behaviours specific to the culture
what is the strange situation an example of and why?
example of an imposed etic → studied behaviour inside one culture and assumed that the results could be applied universally
The APA has recently apologised for in 2022:
- Contributing to eugenics
- Gatekeeping → keeping people of colour out of jobs of influence
- Presenting results as evidence of innate differences
- Scientific racism
- Positioning white people as the ‘norm’
………
One way to reduce cultural bias
Immersion - use researchers who are native to the culture being investigated
Classic studies
limitation
- Cultural bias is an issue in much of social influence
- Asch and Milgram’s studies were conducted exclusively with American ppts
- Replications of these studies in different cultures produced different results
-
Smith and Bonds replication of Asch’s study in collectivist cultures found higher rates of conformity
Understanding of topics like social influence should only be applied to individualistic cultures
counterpoint to classic studies
strength
- As a result of globalisation, individualist-collectivist distinction may no longer apply
-
Takano and Osaka found that 14/15 studies that compared the US to Japan found no evidence of individualism or collectivism, describing the distinction as simplistic
Less of an issue
Cultural psychology
strenght
- Cohen found that this is the study of how people shape and are shaped by their cultural experiences
- Emerging field
- Incorporates work from other researchers eg sociology
- Strive to avoid ethnocentrism by taking an emic approach alongside local researchers
Modern psychology is mindful of the dangers of cultural bias
Ethnic stereotyping -
Prejudice among groups of people
limitation
- Gould explained how the first intelligence tests led to eugenic social policies in the US
- Psychologists used WW1 to test their first IQ tests on 1.75 million army recruits
- Ethnocentric questions like the names of every US president
- Non-americans produced the worse scores
- Racist discourse about genetic inferiority of particular cultural and ethnic groups
Discrimination
