Culture Bias Flashcards
(12 cards)
What issue regarding culture did Henrich et al. (2010) identify in psychological research?
Joseph Henrich et al. (2010) reviewed hundreds of studies in leading psychology journals and found that 68% of research participants came from the United States, and 96% from industrialised nations. Another review found that 80% of research participants were undergraduates studying psychology (Arnett 2008).
What does the term WEIRD refer to and what are its implications?
Henrich et al. coined the term WEIRD to describe the group of people most likely to be studied by psychologists - Westernised, Educated people from Industrialised, Rich Democracies. If the norm or standard for a particular behaviour is set by WEIRD people, then the behaviour of people from non-Westernised, less educated, agricultural and poorer cultures is inevitably seen as ’abnormal, ‘inferior’ or ’unusual.
What is ethnocentrism in the context of cultural bias in psychology?
Ethnocentrism refers to a particular form of cultural bias and is a belief in the superiority of one’s own cultural group. The position described above suggests that people from the US and Europe have presented an ethnocentric view of human behaviour.
How does Ainsworth and Bell’s Strange Situation illustrate ethnocentrism?
Mary Ainsworth and Silvia Bell’s (1970) Strange Situation is an example of this, criticised as reflecting only the norms and values of what is sometimes called Western’ culture. They conducted research on attachment type, suggesting that ‘ideal’ attachment was characterised by the babies showing moderate amounts of distress when left alone by their mother-figure (typical of secure attachment). However, this led to misinterpretation of child-rearing practices in other countries which were seen to deviate from the American ’norm.
How did Japanese infants illustrate issues of ethnocentrism in the Strange Situation?
For example Japanese infants were much more likely to be classed as insecurely attached because they showed considerable distress on separation (Takahashi 1986). It is likely that this finding was due to the fact that Japanese babies are rarely separated from their mother.
What is the difference between etic and emic approaches in cultural psychology?
John Berry (1969) has drawn a distinction between etic and emic approaches in the study of human behaviour. An etic approach looks at behaviour from outside of a given culture and attempts to describe those behaviours as universal. An emic approach functions from inside a culture and identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture.
How does the Strange Situation represent an imposed etic?
Ainsworth and Bell’s research is an example of an imposed etic - they studied behaviour inside one culture (America) and then assumed their ideal attachment type (and the method for assessing it) could be applied universally.
What criticism does Berry (1969) make about psychological research methods?
Berry argues that psychology has often been guilty of an imposed etic approach - arguing that theories, models, concepts, etc., are universal, when they actually came about through emic research inside a single culture. The suggestion is that psychologists should be much more mindful of the cultural relativism of their research - that the ‘things’ they discover may only make sense from the perspective of the culture within which they were discovered - and being able to recognise this is one way of avoiding cultural bias in research.
What is one limitation of classic studies in psychology in relation to cultural bias?
Point: One limitation is that many of the most influential studies in psychology are culturally-biased. Evidence: Cultural bias is a feature of many classic studies of social influence. For instance, both Asch’s and Milgram’s original studies were conducted exclusively with US participants (most of whom were white, middle-class students). Replications of these studies in different countries produced rather different results. For instance, Asch-type experiments in collectivist cultures found significantly higher rates of conformity than the original studies in the US, an individualist culture (e.g. Smith and Bond 1993). Explain: This suggests our understanding of topics such as social influence should only be applied to individualist cultures. Link: This highlights the limited generalisability of classic psychological findings across different cultural contexts.
What is one counterpoint to the issue of cultural bias in psychological research?
Point: However, in an age of increased media globalisation, it is argued that the individualist-collectivist distinction no longer applies. Evidence: The traditional argument is that individualist countries (such as the US) value individuals and independence, whilst collectivist cultures/countries, such as India and China, value society and the needs of the group. However, Yohtaro Takano and Eiko Osaka (1999) found that 14 out of 15 studies that compared the US and Japan found no evidence of individualism or collectivism - describing the distinction as lazy and simplistic. Explain: This suggests that cultural bias in research may be less of an issue in more recent psychological research. Link: Therefore, the impact of cultural distinctions may be diminishing due to globalisation.
What is one strength of cultural psychology in addressing cultural bias?
Point: One strength is the emergence of cultural psychology. Evidence: Cultural (sometimes multicultural) psychology is, according to Dov Cohen (2017), the study of how people shape and are shaped by their cultural experience. This is an emerging field and incorporates work from researchers in other disciplines including anthropology, sociology and political science. Cultural psychologists strive to avoid ethnocentric assumptions by taking an emic approach and conducting research from inside a culture, often alongside local researchers using culturally-based techniques. Cross-cultural research tends to focus on just two cultures instead of larger scale studies with maybe eight or more countries/cultures. Explain: This suggests that modern psychologists are mindful of the dangers of cultural bias and are taking steps to avoid it. Link: Cultural psychology provides a more nuanced and representative understanding of human behaviour.
What is one serious consequence of cultural bias in psychology?
Point: One limitation of cultural bias in psychology is it has led to prejudice against groups of people. Evidence: Stephen Jay Gould (1981) explained how the first intelligence tests led to eugenic social policies in the US. Psychologists used the opportunity of World War I to pilot their first IQ tests on 1.75 million army recruits. Many of the items on the test were ethnocentric, for example assuming everyone would know the names of the US presidents. The result was that recruits from south-eastern Europe and African-Americans received the lowest scores. Explain: The poor performance of these groups was not taken as a sign of the test’s inadequacy but was instead used to inform racist discourse about the genetic inferiority of particular cultural and ethnic groups. Ethnic minorities were deemed ‘mentally unfit’ and ‘feeble-minded’ in comparison to the white majority and were denied educational and professional opportunities as a result. Link: This illustrates how cultural bias can be used to justify prejudice and discrimination towards cultural and ethnic groups.
