Cultural Bias

Cultural Bias

A tendency to view all behaviours through the lens of our cultural biases

Emic

Emic constructs argue that certain behaviours are culturally exclusive to the cultures being studied when they may not be

Etic

Etic constructs argue that certain behaviours are culturally universal when they may not actually be

Imposed etic

Researchers imposing western cultural values on other cultures and belief systems

Ethnocentrism

Belief that one’s ethnic group is superior to others

Gielen

Studied conversation habits and found racial differences in communication styles. Black women made significantly less eye contact that white women

Cole and Scribner

Aimed to investigate the memories of tribal people. Studied Liberian children who went to school vs those who didn’t go to school and found significantly worse ability to memorise a standardised list of words

Western Medicine

Western medicine assumes that all illness is purely biological and ignores the psychological effects on health e.g. placebos

Medical bias

Black Caribbean individuals are 6x more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia in the West despite no significant difference in no. of diagnoses existing in the Caribbean

Takano and Osaka

Metaanalysis of USA/Japan studies and found no evidence of a collectivist/individualist split in behaviour

Ekman

Some human facial expressions are universal

Bond and Smith

Demand characteristics are amplified in non-Western cultures because it’s assumed they have no knowledge of how research is conducted