Culture in psychology: Cultural bias

Question 1

What is cultural bias?

Answer 1

The tendency to judge all people in terms of your own cultural assumptions

Distorts or biases your judgement

Question 2

What is Cultural relativism?

Answer 2

View that behaviour cannot be judged properly unless it is viewed in context of the culture in which it organises

Question 3

What is Ethnocentrism?

Answer 3

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

Question 4

Give an example of alpha bias in cultural bias

Answer 4

• 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

Question 4

Give an example of alpha bias in cultural bias

Answer 4

• 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

Question 5

Give an example of alpha bias in ethnocentrism

Answer 5

• Individualists attitudes towards attachment
  independence is valued & dependence is undesireable
• Collective cultures = dependence is high valued

Question 6

Give an example of beta bias in ethnocentrism

Answer 6

It was believed it was appropriate to use American IQ test all over the world because it was considered universal

Question 7

Give an example of alpha bias in Cultural relativism

Answer 7

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

Question 8

Give an example of beta bias in Cultural relativism

Answer 8

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