culture bias

Culture

The values, beliefs and patterns shared by a group of individuals

Culture bias

The tendency to judge others in terms of one’s own cultural assumptions

Historically psychology has been culturally biased as tendency to carry out research in one culture (usually Western - USA) but mistakenly claim universality - IGNORED culture as an impact/influence on behaviour

Alpha bias

When a theory assumes that cultural groups are profoundly different

Beta bias

When real cultural differences are ignored or minimised

This is often seen where research designs are applied universally that result in drawing conclusions that assume all cultures are the same

Ethnocentrism

A form of cultural bias where the researcher sees the world from their own cultural perspective and believe this is correct/accurate

This often occurs as a lack of awareness that other ways of seeing things can be as valid as one’s own

Examples of culture bias- attachment

• Ainsworth’s strange situation is an example of ethnocentric research

• Designed in America to assess attachment types assuming the strange situation has the same meaning for infants from other culture-

• Cross cultural research has found differences in the findings across cultures

• E.g. in Germany children demonstrated a higher level of avoidant behaviour - may be due to methodology used as children in Germany encouraged to be independent and therefore would respond differently to the strange situation

• Tahasaki found that the strange situation does not work in Japan because the children are so rarely separated from their mothers that they become very distressed and therefore appear resistant

• Culture bias challenges the validity of the findings and the universality of the research and its methodology in explaining and understanding attachment

Cultural relativism

Argues that behaviour can only be truly understood if social norms and values of that culture are considered

Social norms are culturally relative and context is vital in understanding human behaviour

Cultural relativism example - psychological disorders

Psychological disorders are greatly affected by culture

• Anxiety disorders are informed by culture in regards to what situations/objects are likely to cause fear

• Some anxiety disorders are therefore specific to cultures,

• for example in Japan there is a syndrome for fear of upsetting others (taijin kyofusho) whereas in the UK there is no such phobia and this would be classed as a social phobia

• Demonstrates how psychological illness is relative to culture

Universality

When a theory is universal it can be applied to all people irrespective of culture or gender

AO3- recognising cultural bias in psychology

P- one way of dealing with culture bias is to identify and recognise when it occurs

E- recent journal: Psychological Science (top tier research) -had 94% of research in Western cultures and 58% in the US

Furthermore in 2010 Smith and Bond found that 67% of participants in psychological research were American psychology undergraduates

E- This suggests that research is severely unrepresentative but also that this can simply be improved through sampling different cultural groups

L- by recognising cultural bias this issue can be improved

A03- consequence of culture bias

P- culturally biased research can have severe implications through amplifying damaging stereotypes and misrepresentation of cultures

E- diagnosis of schizophrenia is 7x higher in the UK for people with African-Caribbean descent despite a 1% prevalence in Africa and the Caribbean just like in the UK

E- thus suggests that white psychologists are misinterpreting behaviour as symptoms through not taking social norms into account- for example hearing voices may be considered a religious experience in these cultures whereas viewed as a symptom in the UK

L- this demonstrates the negative consequences of culture bias in the diagnosis of mental health disorders- can lead to incorrect treatment, labelling and stigma

AO3- progress in culture bias

P- Only by recognising the existence of cultural bias and by having an awareness of cultural diversity can we seek to improve.

E- Globalisation makes it easier to be aware of diversity e.g. academics hold international conferences which exchange research and ideas across cultures. International conferences allow a wide participation in psychological discussions- aiming to minimise the effects of this issue

E- indigenous psychology has been developed which aims to explicitly draw on the experiences of individuals in different cultural contexts. E.g, Afrocentrism emphasises the importance of recognising the African context of behaviours and attitudes

L- such approaches are said to hold strength in regards to cultural relativism, however some still argue that these are still biased views of behaviours and new forms of ethnocentrism possess the same issues of the approaches they are aiming to replace