cultural bias

Question 1

what is culture bias

Answer 1

a tendency to interpret all phenomena through the ‘lens’ of one’s own culture, ignoring the effects that cultural differences may have on said behaviour

Question 2

what is WEIRD

Answer 2

Westernised, Educated people from Industrialised, Rich Democracies

Question 3

how may non-WEIRD people be interpreted

Answer 3

abnormal, strange, or inferior

Question 4

why may the US diagnosis of mental health be culturally biased

Answer 4

DSM classification system: 2x as many Māoris in NZ and Aborigines in Australia are admitted to mental hospitals than whites.
this is due to the biased book’s classification comparison to the ‘norm’ or WEIRD people

Question 5

what is ethnocentrism

Answer 5

part of cultural bias, belief in the superiority of one’s own cultural group. other cultures are judged by the standards and values of one’s own culture and thus leads often to prejudice/discrimination against other cultures

Question 6

what is an example of ethnocentrism

Answer 6

in Ainsworth’s Strange Situation, the ‘ideal’ attachment style was ‘secure’, which led American mothers labelled to be normal and German mothers to be cold/rejecting for encouraging independence in their children.
Japanese babies were labelled as insecure although are rarely put down by their mothers

Question 7

what is cultural relativism

Answer 7

the idea that norms/values, as well as ethics and moral standards, can only be meaningful and understood within specific social/cultural contexts

Question 8

what is an imposed etic

Answer 8

when we impose Western values/cultures into another different culture and judging them by it, e.g Ainsworth’s strange situation

Question 9

what is the etic approach to research

Answer 9

• research conducted in one country and the findings/conclusions are applied to other countries, e.g. Starbucks.
• assumes that behaviours are universal

Question 10

what is the emic approach to research

Answer 10

• Research conducted within 1 small specific culture/area and only used to describe behaviours of that culture, e.g. Mcdonald’s
• relies on the assumption that human behaviours are specific and unique to a given culture

Question 11

what is an emir approach useful for in psychology

Answer 11

avoiding culture bias in research

Question 12

what is the cultural bias issue with intelligence testing

Answer 12

• demonstrations of intelligence in Western culture often involves completing tasks ‘against the clock’ such as timed assessments in exams.
• there is question of the validity of the ‘mental quickness’ in relation to intelligence.
• The Baganda people of Uganda see intelligence as slow, careful and deliberate thought

Question 13

what’re 2 -evals for culture bias

Answer 13

culturally biased classic studies
prejudice/eugenics

Question 14

how’re culturally biased classic studies a neg eval for culture bias

Answer 14

• many classic studies are culturally biased
• eg. Asch/Milgram’s research involved white middle-class students from the US. this causes replication issues for other cultures
• those from other cultures perform differently and are then seen as ‘abnormal’ or ‘inferior’. EG Asch-type replications done in collectivist cultures found much higher conformity rates than in the US studies

Question 15

how is prejudice/eugenics a neg eval for culture bias

Answer 15

• cultural bias in psychology has led to prejudice against groups of people and can even help create eugenic social policies (US in particular)
• should showed how WW1 intelligence tests on 1,750,000 army recruits with ethnocentric questions (e.g. US President names), with South-East Europeans and African Americans getting the lowest score
• led to racist discourse of genetic inferiority of these groups. minorities were deemed as ‘mentally unfit’ in comparison to white people and were denied professional opportunities/education - leading to prejudice/discrimination

Question 16

what’re 2 positive evals for culture bias

Answer 16

• individualism-collectivism is no longer such an issue in modern day culture
• cultural psychology

Question 17

how is individualism-collectivism no longer an issue in todays society

Answer 17

• Typically, countries like the UK/US are seen as ‘individualistic’, with Indian/Asian countries considered ‘collectivist’ due to the emphasis on community
• however, studies found that in 14/15 studies comparing the US and Japan, there was no evidence of either traits.
• the description is called ‘lazy’/too simplistic.
• suggests culture bias may be less of a problem now than in the past

Question 18

how is cultural psychology a positive eval for culture bias

Answer 18

• research into culture bias has led to ‘cultural psychology’, the study of how people shape/are shaped by their cultural experiences
• this incorporates works from anthropology, sociology and political science
• cultural psychologists have an emic approach, conducting research from inside a culture, alongside local researchers.
• this means that modern psychologists are more mindful of cultural bias and take steps to avoid if

Question 19

what’re universal behaviours that aren’t culturally relative

Answer 19

Facial expressions, reciprocity and interactional synchrony