Culture bias

What is universality?

a theory of behaviour applies to everyone

What is the problem with universality?

It is difficult to come up with universal theories of behaviour because there are important differences between cultures.

What is it called when researched misrepresent differences between cultures?

Cultural bias

What is ethnocentrism?

When someone focuses on their own cultural perspective.

Sometimes, this also involves assuming that their own cultural perspective is correct, or more normal and sometimes seeing the social practises of other cultures as abnormal

What is ethnocentric bias?

When psychology research lacks validity or reliability due to ethnocentrism, we say that the research suffers from ethnocentric bias.

And this might be because the researchers ignored other cultures completely Or because the researchers studied other cultures, but without understanding their cultural perspectives

What are the limitations of ethnocentrism?

• experiments may lack external validity and reliability because the results may not generalise to other cultures

• ethnocentric standards for ‘normal behaviour’ mean that people from other cultures might be misdiagnosed with psychological conditions, because they are seen to be behaving abnormally

• seeing other cultures as ‘abnormal’ may lead to harmful stereotypes

Examples of ethnocentric bias

Ainsworths attachment as she assumed babies from other cultures would behave in the same way but babies in collectivist cultures have different attachment styles from Americans

What is cultural relativism?

behaviours must be understood from the perspective of a specific culture.

Evaluation of cultural relativism

One strength of cultural relativism is that it prevents ethnocentric bias.

Two limitations of cultural relativism are that it Exaggerates differences between cultures, and Minimises differences within a culture.

What is cross cultural research?

• research being carried out in different cultures, to see if theories generalise, or if there are cultural variations

• researchers from a number of different cultures, to minimise the risk of ethnocentric bias

Etics and Emics

•Emics are the constructs particular to a specific culture

•E.g. ….queueing, over-thanking, Sunday roasts….

•Etics are constructs that are universal to all people.

•E.g. ……need to communicate, need to attach, sleep

Bias can occur when emics and etics get mistaken for each other

Imposed etic

Etic constructs are assumed to be universal, but may not be

•This can lead to ‘Imposed Etics’, where a construct from one culture is applied inappropriately to another (in the belief that it is universal) and a behavior is misinterpreted/misunderstood

Evaluation (AO3):

Evidence of the fact that culture bias is an

unsolvable ISSUE…

= Individualism vs Collectivism: Individualist cultures value personal freedom and independence, whereas Collectivist cultures value interdependence and group needs.

These cultures are simply not comparable in terms of origins of behaviours.

This will cause an ethnocentric bias or an imposed etic – leading to compromised validity of any theory construction.

However, Individualist – Collectivist

Distinction may no Longer Apply:

• Due to increasing global and social media, the lines between Individualist and Collectivist behaviours are becoming blurred.

• Research by takano & Osaka (1999) found no evidence of Individualist versus Collectivist differences in their behaviour.

The issue will be reduced.