Culture in psychology: Cultural bias Flashcards
What is cultural bias?
The tendency to judge all people in terms of your own cultural assumptions
Distorts or biases your judgement
What is Cultural relativism?
View that behaviour cannot be judged properly unless it is viewed in context of the culture in which it organises
What is Ethnocentrism?
Seeing things from the POV of ourselves & our social group.
Evaluating other groups of people using the standards and custom of one’s own culture
Give an example of alpha bias in cultural bias
- We expect members of individualist cultures to be less conformist due to being less oriented towards group norms
- researcher reviewed 15 studies - compared US & Japan in individualism/collectivism
- 14/15 of studies did not support the common view about differences in conformity
suggests individualism/collectivism dimension may be not be a real distinction
Give an example of alpha bias in cultural bias
- We expect members of individualist cultures to be less conformist due to being less oriented towards group norms
- researcher reviewed 15 studies - compared US & Japan in individualism/collectivism
- 14/15 of studies did not support the common view about differences in conformity
suggests individualism/collectivism dimension may be not be a real distinction
Give an example of alpha bias in ethnocentrism
- Individualists attitudes towards attachment
independence is valued & dependence is undesireable - Collective cultures = dependence is high valued
Give an example of beta bias in ethnocentrism
It was believed it was appropriate to use American IQ test all over the world because it was considered universal
Give an example of alpha bias in Cultural relativism
Researcher initially concluded that there were significant gender differences to culture
later recognised there were universals - men were more aggressive than women in all cultures
Give an example of beta bias in Cultural relativism
Hearing voices in schizophrenia = common in some cultures
By assuming the same rules apply universally, we may diagnose people as mentally ill but the diagnosis is relative to our culture