Issues & Debates : Culture

Question 1

What is a cultural bias?

Answer 1

The tendency to judge people in terms on their own cultural assumptions. Most psychologists suffer from a western bias and assume findings can be applied to other countries

Question 2

What are WEIRD people?

Answer 2

Westernised
Educated people from
Industrialised
Rich
Democracies

Question 3

What is ethnocentrism?

Answer 3

Seeing the world only from your own cultural perspective and believing that this one perspective is normal and correct

Question 4

Whats an example of ethnocentrism?

Answer 4

Ainsworth & Bell (1970)’s strange situation was developed to assess attachment types. Researchers assume that the strange situation has the same meaning for the infants from other cultures (American study). German children had higher rates of insecure-avoidant attachment because that’s culture values and encourages independent behaviour meaning children react differently.

Question 5

What is cultural relativism?

Answer 5

The theory that behaviour can only be properly understood if the cultural context is taken into consideration

Question 6

What is an example of cultural relativism?

Answer 6

Sternberg (1985) observed that coordination skills that were essential to preliterate life may be mostly irrelevant to intelligent behaviour for most people in a literate and developed society. Therefore, the only way you understand intelligence is to take the cultural content into account.

Question 7

What’s the etic approach?

Answer 7

Looks at behaviour from outside a culture and identifies behaviours that are universal

Question 8

What’s the emic approach?

Answer 8

Looks at behaviour from inside a culture and identifies behaviours specific to that culture

Question 9

What does imposed etic mean?

Answer 9

Ainsworth and Bell studies behaviours inside a single culture (America) and assumed that the ideal attachment theory could be applied universally

Question 10

What’s alpha bias?

Answer 10

Occurs when a theory assumes that cultural groups are profoundly different

Question 11

What’s beta bias?

Answer 11

Occurs when real cultural differences are ignored or minimised, and all people are assumed to be the same – resulting in universal research designs and conclusions

Question 12

What’s universality?

Answer 12

The idea that conclusions drawn in psychological rescue can be applied to everybody, everywhere and regardless of time and culture

Question 13

What’re the strengths of cultural psychology?

Answer 13

• Growing influence from cultural psychology → Cohen (2017) defined cultural psychology as the study of how individuals are shaped by and actively shape their cultural experiences, emphasising the importance of understanding psychological phenomena within specific cultural contexts vs a universal perspective (for example using an emic approach)
• Displays distinction between universal behaviours and cultural specific ones → Ekman et al (1987) conducted cross-cultural studies demonstrating basic facial expressions such as anger, guilt and disgust are universally recognised, suggesting they’re biologically predetermined and universally experienced.

Question 14

What’re the limitations of cultural psychology?

Answer 14

• Cultural bias in classic psych studies, undermining generalisability → Smith & Bond (1993) found that in one European textbook on social psychology, 66% of studies were American, 32% European and 2% from the rest of the world. Key studies like Asch’s (1951) and Milgram’s (1963) were considered generalisable tho were only from a white, male, American point of view.
• Consequences of ethnic stereotyping → Gould (1981) analysed the use of the first intelligence tests in America and revealed they promoted eugenic social policies, ignoring how intelligence differs through culture groups.