Issues and debates - culture Flashcards
Culture bias
The act of interpreting and judging behaviour and psychological characteristics of one culture by holding them to the standards of your own.
Ethnocentrism
The view that our own culture should be the basis for judgements of other groups. The views, beliefs and cultures of our own group are “normal” or superior, and those of other group are “strange”. This limits the validity of these theories and neglects the important cross-cultural differences. E.g., when assumptions about one’s own culture are considered generalisable to other cultures.
Etic approach
This type of approach seeks to develop universal, ‘nomothetic’ theories about human nature and behaviour that span all cultures.
Examples of imposed etic and the problems they could create: Rack
Definitions of abnormality vary from culture to culture. Rack (1984) claims that African-Caribbeans in Britain are sometimes diagnosed as ‘mentally ill’ on the basis of behaviour which is perfectly normal in their subculture, and this is due to the ignorance of African-Caribbean subculture on the part of white psychiatrists.
Examples of imposed etic and the problems they could create: Ainsworth
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 American children. German children, on average, demonstrate a higher rate of insecure-avoidant behaviour. However, it is not the case that German mothers are more insensitive than American mothers. Instead, they value and encourage independent behaviour, and therefore their children react differently in the Strange Situation.
Emic approach
This is where one culture is studied in order to discover culture specific behaviour, and they will only generalise their findings to the culture they have been studying. They do not try and generalise to everyone.
Impose etic
Refers to the use of a measure (e.g DSM), which has been developed according to the values of one culture (in this case largely North American) and used to make assessments in that culture (in this case of mental health)…and then used to study or JUDGE behaviour in another culture with alternative cultural reference points.
Cultural relativism
is the principle of regarding the beliefs, values, and practices of a culture from the viewpoint of that culture itself.
Evaluation- indigenous psychologies
The problems of ethnocentrism have now led to Indigenous psychologies. This is the development of different groups of theories in different countries. For example, Afrocentrism is a movement whose central proposition is that all black people have their roots in Africa and that psychological theories concerning such people must therefore be African centred and must express African values. This approach suggests that the values and culture of Europeans at worst devalue non- European people, and at best are irrelevant to the life and culture of people of African descent. Ultimately, indigenous psychologies can help us reduce cultural bias in psychology.
Evaluation- how the consequences can be damaging
The consequences of cultural bias can be immensely damaging and theories that suffer culture biases have a significantly negative effect on society. For example, Yerkes’ skewed intelligence test inaccurately measured African-American’s intelligence as much lower due to the biased test which favoured white participants. This limited promotional opportunities during WW1.These theories may inappropriately affect minorities and create unfair stereotypes (such as low intelligence). As a result, many theories that fail to include a cultural impact on society can be deemed socially sensitive. Therefore, more work needs to be done to ensure that theories consider their societal impact before being published.
Evaluation- how cultural diversity and laws of science
A concern for many psychologists revolves around how a true science seeks general laws of behaviour, and how cultural diversity may jeopardise this. For example, The use of nomothetic laws can be useful in helping as many people as possible, but if there are regional differences in behaviour, these interventions and treatments are only going to be effective in smaller clusters of the world. Cultural diversity means research has to take place in every conceivable culture in order to explain behaviour accurately.
