gender and culture in psychology: cultural bias

Question 1

universality and bias

Answer 1

• Henrich reviewed studies in leading psychology journals, found that 68% of participants came from the US and 96% from industrialised nations
• suggests that what we know about human behaviour has a strong cultural bias
• Henrich coined the term WEIRD to describe those most likely to be studied (Westernised, Educated people from Industrialised, Rich Democracies
• if the norm for a particular behaviour is set by WEIRD people, then the behaviour of other people will be seen as abnormal or inferior

Question 2

ethnocentrism

Answer 2

• a belief in the superiority of one’s own cultural group, suggests that people from America and Europe have presented an ethnocentric view of behaviour
• Ainsworth and Bell’s strange situation shows this, criticised as reflecting only the norms and values of American culture
• the strange situation lead to misinterpretation of child-rearing practices in other countries which were seen to deviate from the American norm

Question 3

cultural relativism

Answer 3

• Berry drew a distinction between etic and emic approaches in the study of behaviour
• an etic approach looks at behaviour from outside a given culture, describes behaviours as universal
• an emic approach functions from inside a culture and identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture
• Ainsworth and Bell’s research is an example of imposed etic, they studied behaviour inside one culture and then assumed their findings could be applied universally
• the suggestion is that psychologists should be more mindful of the cultural relativism of their research (that the things they discover may only make sense from the perspective of one culture)

Question 4

evaluation - classic studies

Answer 4

• many influential studies are culturally-biased
• for example, Asch and Milgram’s original studies used just US participants, replication sin other countries produced different results
• our understanding of topics such as social influence should only be applied to individualist cultures

Question 5

evaluation - cultural psychology

Answer 5

• strength is emergence of cultural psychology
• this is the study of how people shape and are shaped by cultural experience
• strive to avoid ethnocentric assumptions by taking emic approach and conducting research inside a culture
• modern psychologists are mindful of dangers of cultural bias

Question 6

evaluation - ethnic stereotyping

Answer 6

• limitation is cultural bias has led to prejudice against groups of people
• psychologists used world war 1 to pilot first iq tests, many items were ethnocentric, resulting in people from south-eastern europe and african-americans receiving lower scores
• ethnic minorities were deemed mentally unfit or feeble-minded, were denied education and professional opportunities