Culture bias Flashcards
what is culture
Culture refers to the ideas, rules, customs, morals and social behaviour of a particular collection of people or society
what is Universality
Universality: The aim to develop theories that apply to all people and can therefore be generalised globally.
what is culture bias
The tendency to ignore cultural differences and judge all people in terms of your own cultural assumptions. This distorts or biases your judgement.
It can occur when researchers conduct research in their own culture and assume that their findings apply to those living in other cultures.
what is Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism: The assumption that one ethnic group is superior to another or all other ethnic groups. There is a tendency to view the beliefs, customs and behaviours of our own group as the ‘normal’, whereas those of other groups are ‘strange’, abnormal or deviant.
This may lead to prejudice and discrimination towards other cultures.
what is alpha bias
Alpha bias: This refers to theories that assume that there are real and enduring differences between cultural groups.
An example of alpha bias is the distinction often made between individualist and collectivist cultures (e.g. the US and Japan respectively).
Ethnocentrism can lead to alpha bias, because….
…one’s own culture is considered to be different and better and the consequence of this is that other cultures and their practices are devalued.
An example of this is individualist attitudes towards attachment where independence is valued and dependence is seen as undesirable. In collectivist cultures, dependence tends to be more highly valued.
However, assumptions of real differences (alpha bias) can lead psychologists to overlook universals.
For example, Margaret Mead conducted research in Papua New Guinea, where she initially concluded that there were significant gender differences due to culture (cultural determinism), but later recognised that there were universals (probably related to biology) – that the men in all cultures were more aggressive than the women.
She concluded that the degree to which these behaviours are expressed is relative to the particular culture (cultural relativism).
what is beta bias
Beta bias: This refers to theories that ignore or minimise cultural differences.
They do this by assuming that all people are the same and therefore it is reasonable to use the same theories/methods with all cultural groups, resulting in universal conclusions.
Ethnocentrism can lead to beta bias….
…if psychologists believe their world view is the only view.
One example of this is intelligence testing. Psychologists use IQ tests devised by Western psychologists to study intelligence in many different cultures. The psychologists assume that their view of intelligence applies to all cultures equally. The result is that, when such IQ tests are used on non-Western cultures, non-Western people may appear less intelligent.
Such tests are described as an ‘imposed etic’, where a research method or psychological test that is developed by one group is imposed on other groups of people, with the belief that perceptions, behaviours, etc. are shared by all cultural groups.
what is cultural relativism
Cultural Relativism: The belief that it is important to consider the behaviour of the individual within their culture before making a judgement. Context is vital.
Norms and values, as well as ethics and moral standards can only be meaningful and understood within specific social and cultural contexts.
Therefore, when psychologists study another culture, they need to try to understand how that particular culture sees the world.
Cultural bias can be dealt with by conducting studies with samples from different cultural groups.
However, this was not the situation at the end of the last century….
For example, in 1998, Smith and Bond surveyed research in one European textbook on social psychology. They found that 66% of the studies were American, 32% European and 2% came from the rest of the world.
Sears (1986) reported that 82% of research studies used undergraduates as the participants in psychology studies and 51% were psychology students. A more recent study (Henrich et al., 2010) found that 67% were American psychology students.
This suggests that a considerable amount of psychology is based on middle-class, academic, young Western adults, who are often male, representing specific cultural groups.
Findings are not only unrepresentative on a global scale, but also within Western culture.
Research has revealed that African-Caribbean immigrants are 7x more likely to be diagnosed with a mental illness.
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.
To counter this, DSM-4 included in its appendix a list of 25 culture-bound syndromes – groups of symptoms classified as treatable illnesses in certain cultures that are not recognised as such in the West (e.g. Koro – the belief that the penis is retracting into the body - China)
Data from the US Army IQ test used just before WW1 led to enduring stereotypes concerning certain ethnic groups and their IQ.
The tests showed that African-Americans were at the bottom of the scale in terms of IQ, with the lowest mental age.
At worst, cultural bias in psychological research can perpetuate stereotypes, as well as leading to prejudice and discrimination.
One way to counter ethnocentrism in psychology is to encourage indigenous psychologies – 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.
Afrocentrism disputes the view that European values are universally appropriate descriptions of human behaviour that apply equally to Europeans and non-Europeans alike.
It 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.
‘Indigenous psychologies’ is an ‘emic’ approach
one which emphasises the uniqueness of every culture by focusing on culturally specific phenomena.
However, the problem with an emic approach is that the findings tend to be significant only to the understanding of behaviour within that culture i.e. the findings are difficult to generalise to other cultures.
