Culture Bias

Question 1

define culture

Answer 1

groups of people that may differ in terms of values, traditions, behaviours, language, belief, ethnic background.
subcultures - smaller cultures within cultures.

Question 2

culture bias

Answer 2

interpreting and judging behaviour and psychological characteristics of one culture by holding them to the standards of your own.

Question 3

studies with culture bias

Answer 3

Who is happy? - judged happiness in other countries based on how it is defined in the western world.
Kohlberg - applied his levels of moral development created on samples from US on people from other countries.

Question 4

cross cultural studies

Answer 4

aims to investigate the effect of various cultural practices on human behaviour where cultures are compared and contrasted. used to determine if certain behaviours are universal. e.g. Milgram researched obedience in different cultures.

Question 5

advantages of cross cultural studies

Answer 5

helps to identify what human behaviours are inate/universal e.g. much sexual behaviour is the same across cultures. helps us to understand what is determined by the environment. reduced ethnocentrism

Question 6

disadvantages of cross cultural studies

Answer 6

psychologists from one culture may misunderstand another, they interpret it with the values of their own culture. observer bias. e.g. symptoms of depression in Nigeria are similiar to symptoms of psychosis here. imposed etic

Question 7

imposed etic

Answer 7

use of psychological tests developed in one culture and then used in another. e.g. Cole et al (1971) asked adult member of Kpelle tribe in Africa to sort objects into categories. sorted them into functional groups, very different to western way. suggests what is intelligent behaviour differs between cultures. also kohlberg

Question 8

individualist cultures

Answer 8

emphasis self interest and interest of immediate family personal autonomy, initiative and achievement. e.g. UK USA, Germany

Question 9

collectivist cultures

Answer 9

emphasises loyalty to the group, interdependence and the belief that group decisions are more important than individual ones. e.g. South Korea, China

Question 10

Harris (1995)

Answer 10

investigated role of love across 42 hunter gatherer societies. there was evidence of romantic love in 26 of the societies. only 6 gave complete freedom of choice of marriage partner, all others had arranged marriages. suggests the notion of romantic love is not universal.

Question 11

ethnocentrism

Answer 11

the view that your own culture should be the basis for judgement of cultures. eurocentricism is common - focus on western values. vast majority of research done in America and Europe.

Question 12

cultural relativism

Answer 12

regards all culture equally worthy of respect and the role of psychology is to understand how other culture view the world.
work to understand cultural practicies of other groups in its own cultural context

Question 13

alpha bias

Answer 13

assumes there are actual differences between cultures, means we may miss universal traits. e.g. although symptoms of schiz varies between cultures there are some universal (hearing voices, delusions). taking alpha means missing these and potentially missing a biological cause of the illness

Question 14

beta bias

Answer 14

assumes all people are the same, differences are ignored. e.g. Harris study on love. definition of romanictic love may have been ignored by the researcher and an assumption made that the western view of love is universal.

Question 15

Amir and Sharon (1987)

Answer 15

attempted to repeat findings of 6 American studies in Israel. there were 64 significant finding in the American findings, only 24 of which were found in the Israeli population. also 6 new findings in the Israeli population.

Question 16

historical and social context

Answer 16

until quite recently psychology has been almost exclusively a western subject. Rozenweig found that 64% of the worlds 56000 psychology researcher are American. Haggbloom used various evidence to identify the greatest psychologists of 20th century,<20% were non-americans

Question 17

how culture change over time going forwards

Answer 17

cross culutral studies go out of date quickly. internet causes the world to get smaller, many more people interconnected cross culturally. western views become more universal.

Question 18

Celia Mosher

Answer 18

asked her middle class female patients about their sex lives at the end of the 19th century. those born born in the middle of the century saw it as a means to reproduce but not pleasurable. those born later described it more positively and saw it closely linked to passionate love.

Question 19

what is being done now.

Answer 19

modern psychologists are more aware and trying to implement strategies to reduce the issues. e.g. encouraging indigenous psychologists. Afnocentrism

Question 20

Afnocentrism

Answer 20

the African world view differs from the Eurocentric views. have emphasis on ‘survival of the tribe’ and ‘oneness with nature’ leading to values of cooperation, interdependence and collective responsibility. Afrocentrism focuses of these unique values.