Issues and debates: Culture bias Flashcards
What’s culture bias?
Overlooking cultural differences by looking at human behaviour from the perspective of your own culture.
What’s cultural relativism?
The belief that behaviour can’t be judged properly unless it’s viewed in the context of which it originates.
What’s ethnocentrism?
judging other cultures by the standards and values of your own culture.
What’s culture?
The rules, customs, morals and ways of interacting that bind members of a society or another collection of people.
What’s alpha bias?
Theories that assume there is a real and enduring difference between cultural groups.
What’s beta bias?
Theories that ignore or minimise cultural differences. Assumes people are all the same.
What’s the etic approach?
Studying behaviour across many cultures in order to find universal human behaviours.
What’s the emic approach?
Studying cultures in isolation by identifying behaviours that are specific to that culture.
What are collectivist cultures?
Refers to countries like India and China where people are thought put the needs of the group/ community first.
What are individualist cultures?
Refers to countries like the US, where people are thought to prioritise individual needs over the needs of the group.
How does ethnocentrism lead to alpha bias?
own culture is considered to be normal + better, and the consequences of this is that other cultures and their practices are devalued.
E.g., in individualistic cultures independence is valued and dependence devalued,
whereas in collectivist cultures dependence seems to be more highly valued.
How does ethnocentrism lead to beta bias?
If psychologists believe their world view is the only view.
For example, in the case of IQ testing the western IQ test was used across the world because there was an assumption that the American standard was universal.
AO3: Culture bias
-Prone to demand characteristics
-Culture bias + stereotypes
+Improves validity
+Indigenous psychologies
(-AO3) How is culture bias prone to demand characteristics ?
Western culture the participant’s familiarity with the general aims and objectives of scientific research is assumed to be already known.
In cultures without historical experience of research, local populations may be less affected by demand characteristics than western participants.
This is a weakness because familiarity with the research tradition threatens the validity of the outcome.
(-AO3) How does culture bias affect stereotypes?
Real world affects
Culturally biased research can have significant real-world effects by, for example amplifying and validating damaging stereotypes.
The US Army used an IQ test before WW1 which was culturally biased toward the dominant white majority.
Unsurprisingly, the test showed that African-Americans were at the bottom of the IQ scale.
This had a negative effect on the attitudes of Americans toward this demographic, which highlights the negative impact that culturally biased research can have.
