L2 - Culture Bias

Question 1

Culture

Answer 1

• can be defined as the norms, values, beliefs and patterns of behaviour shared by a group of people

Question 2

Culture bias

Answer 2

is the tendency to judge people in terms of one’s own cultural assumptions – through the lens of one’s own cultural norms and values.

Question 3

Ethnocentrism

Answer 3

• means seeing the world only from one’s own cultural perspective, and believing that this one perspective is both normal and correct.
• An ethnocentric perspective can also take the stance that one’s own culture is superior to other cultures.

Question 4

Cultural relativism

Answer 4

• The idea that a behaviour can only be properly understood/only has meaning/only makes sense in the context of the norms and values of the society or culture in which it occurs

Question 5

Universality

Answer 5

When a theory is described as universal, it means that it can apply to all people, irrespective of culture.

Question 6

What is cultural bias

Answer 6

• tendency to judge people in terms of one’s own cultural assumptions.
• Historically, psychology has been dominated by white, middle-class American males, who have monopolised psychology both as researchers and
  participants.
• However, research findings and theories have been generalised, as if culture makes no real difference.

Question 7

2 perspectives when studying behaviour in different cultures

Answer 7

• Emic approach
• Etic approach

Question 8

Etic approach

Answer 8

• looks at behaviour from outside of a given culture and attempts to describe these behaviours as univeral

Question 9

Emic approach

Answer 9

• functions from inside a culture and identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture

Question 10

One way to consider cultural bias is through…..

Answer 10

Ethnocentrism & cultural relativism

Question 11

What is ethnocentrism?

Answer 11

• an often inadvertent lack of awareness that other ways of seeing things can be as valid as one’s own.
  E.g. definitions of abnormality vary from culture to culture.
• Rack (1984) claims that African-Caribbean’s in Britain are sometimes diagnosed as ‘mentally ill’ on the basis of behaviour which is perfectly normal in their subculture
• this is due to the ignorance of African-Caribbean subculture on the part of white psychiatrists.

Question 12

Example of ethnocentrism

Answer 12

• ainsworth’s strange situation
• many researchers assume that the Strange Situation has the same meaning for the infants from other cultures, as it does for Americans
• on average Germans have more insecure-avoidant behaviour but German mothers are not more insensitive then American mothers
• they value independent behaviour, so their children react differently in the Strange Situation
• on average Japanese have more insecure-resistant behaviour but the mothers are not over protective as people in Japan show interdependence towards each other and are encouraged to support and rely on each other
• explains why Japanese children are distressed on separation in the Strange Situation
• the strange situation has been described as an imposed Etic

Question 13

Imposed etic

Answer 13

• when a technique or theory is developed in one culture and then imposed on another.

Question 14

Ethnocentrism weaknesses

Answer 14

• may result in the diagnosis of mental conditions being wrong - e.g. African Caribbean people are more likely to be diagnosed with SZ
• assumes members of a cultural group are all the same

Question 15

What is cultural relativism?

Answer 15

• cultural relativism insists that behaviour can be properly understood only if the cultural context is taken into consideration
• According to this viewpoint, the meaning of intelligence is different in every culture.
  E.g. Sternberg (1985) pointed out that coordination skills that may be essential to life in a preliterate society (e.g., those motor skills required for shooting a bow and arrow) may be mostly irrelevant to what is considered intelligent behaviour for most people in a literate and more “developed” society.
• so any study which draws its sample from only one cultural context (like American college students) and then generalises its findings to all people everywhere, cannot be culturally relative.

Question 16

What is universality

Answer 16

• assumption in some research that the findings of their study will generalise globally.
• Psychological research often considers the perspectives of many cultures and as such the claim for universality can be supported by good research
  E.g. David Buss (1989) surveyed 10000 participants from 33 countries to support the theory on sexual selection. This study is an example of good research where the findings can be seen as universal.

Question 17

Examples of culturally biased theories/research

Answer 17

• asch, zimbardo, milgram - individualistic/americzn
• ainsworth
• Romanian orphanage study - only assumes about Romania not other countries
• self-disclosure in relationships
• virtual relationships

Question 18

Ways to reduce cultural bias

Answer 18

• educating researchers on different cultures
• carry out studies with people from different cultures

Question 19

Evaluation of culture bias

Answer 19

strengths
- globalisation
- cultural psychology
- techniques to avoid
- universal description
weaknesses
- many studies are culturally biased

Question 20

Many studies are culturally biased

Answer 20

• One problem in psychological research is that many classic studies are culturally biased
  E.g. Milgram, Asch and Zimbardo was carried out in the US with American (often male) participants and then findings were being generalised to other cultures.
• when Asch’s line study was replicated in other cultures such as India and China, it was found that cultures that were collectivist (this means there was more emphasis on the needs of the group rather than the individual in collectivist cultures) tended
  to show higher rates of conformity than individualistic cultures (this means that there was an emphasis on the needs of the individual rather than the group) such as the UK and France.
• This means that topics in social influence such as obedience and conformity should only be applied to individualistic cultures and definitely not be seen as universal (applied to all cultures).

Question 21

Globalisation

Answer 21

• Although in an age of increased globalisation the individualistic-collectivist distinction between cultures may not apply.
• In a study by Takano and Osaka (1999), they found that in 14 out of the 15 studies looking at the Japan and the US, the collectivist and individualistic distinction did not apply
• suggests that cultural bias in more recent research especially after the millennium may not suffer from cultural bias as previous research did.

Question 22

Emergence of cultural psychology

Answer 22

• acknowledging cultural bias in research has encouraged the emergence of cultural psychology.
• Cultural psychology according to Cohen (2017) can be defined as the study of how people shape and are shaped by their cultural experiences – this is a new field of research and incorporates other fields of research such as anthropology, sociology and political science.
• Cultural psychology attempts to avoid ethnocentric assumptions by taking an emic approach – which is conducting research from inside a culture, alongside local researchers using culturally based techniques. - Cross cultural researchers will tend to focus on no more than two cultures rather than on a larger scale of about 8 countries/cultures.
• This means that researchers can avoid being culturally biased.

Question 23

Techniques used to avoid cultural bias

Answer 23

• Another positive of cultural bias is techniques used to avoid it.
  E.g. contemporary psychologists are significantly more open-minded and well-travelled than previously, and have an increased understanding of other cultures at both a personal and professional level.
  E.g. international psychology conferences increase the exchange of ideas between psychologists which has helped to reduce ethnocentrism in psychology and enabled a more nuanced understanding and
  appreciation of cultural relativism.

Question 24

Describing a theory as universal

Answer 24

• when a theory is described as universal, it means that it can apply to all people, irrespective of gender and culture
• this also means that it needs to include real differences.
• With regard to culture, one way to achieve universality would be to employ what Berry (1969) described as a derived etic
• where a series of emic studies take place in local settings, conducted by local researchers using local techniques.
• Such studies can build up a picture of human behaviour in a similar way to the ethnographic approach taken by anthropologists.
• This is the study of different cultures through the use of comparisons, as by making comparisons between cultures we can learn more about a target culture.

Question 25

Note

Answer 25

Discuss cultural bias in psychology (16 marks) - likely to come up in real a-level