Culture in psychology: Cultural bias Flashcards
What is an emic construct?
one that is applied to only in one cultural group, so they vary from place to place (differences between cultures).
What is an emic approach?
refers to the investigation of a culture from within the culture itself. This means that research of European society from a European perspective is emic,
What is an evaluation of the emic approach?
An emic approach is more likely to have ecological validity as the findings are less likely to be distorted or caused by a mismatch between the cultures of the researchers and the culture being investigated
What is a culture bias?
can occur when a researcher assumes that an emic construct (behavior specific to a single culture) is actually an etic (behavior universal to all cultures).
What is an etic construct?
a theoretical idea that is assumed to apply in all cultural groups. Therefore, etic constructs are considered universal to all people, and are factors that hold across all cultures
What do etic constructs assume?
that most human behavior is common to humans but that cultural factors influence the development or display of this behavior.
What are imposed etics?
where a construct from one culture is applied inappropriately to another
What is ethnocentrism?
occurs when a researcher assumes that their own culturally specific practices or ideas are ‘natural’ or ‘right’
- Research which is ‘centred’ around one cultural group is called ‘ethnocentric’.
What is cultural relativism?
The principle of regarding the beliefs, values, and practices of a culture from the viewpoint of that culture itself.
Examples of culturally biased research
- Ainsworth’s Strange Situation for Attachment
- IQ testing and Research (e.g. Eysenck)
How is Ainsworth’s strange situation culturally biased?
The strange situation procedure is not appropriate for assessing children from non-US or UK populations as it is based on Western childrearing ideals (i.e. ethnocentric).
The original study only used American, middle-class, white, home-reared infants and mothers therefore the generalisability of the findings could be questioned as well as whether this procedure would be valid for other cultures too.
Cultural differences in child-rearing styles make results liable to misinterpretation e.g. German or Japanese samples.
Takahshi (1990) aimed to see whether the strange situation is a valid procedure for cultures other than the original. Takashi found no children in the avoidant-insecure stage, this could be explained in cultural terms as Japanese children are taught that such behavior is impolite and the would be actively discouraged from displaying it. Also because Japanese children experience much less separation, the SSC was more than mildly stressful.
What are consequences of the culture bias?
Nobles (1976) argues that western psychology has been a tool of oppression and dominance. Cultural bias has also made it difficult for psychologists to separate the behavior they have observed from the context in which they observed it.
How to reduce culture bias?
Equal opportunity legislation aims to rid psychology of cultural bias and racism, but we must be aware merely swapping old, overt racism for new, more subtle forms of racism (Howitt and Owusu-Bempah, 1994)
