culture bias

culture bias

• tendency to judge others in terms of our own cultural assumptions.

• alpha bias - a theory assumes cultural groups are profoundly different.

• beta bias - real cultural differences ignored or minimised - research applied universally believing all cultures are the same.

• ethnocentrism - researcher sees world from own cultural perspective believing this is correct, e.g. because lack of awareness of other perspectives being valid.

culture bias examples

• psychopathology:

  • definitions of abnormality demonstrate as views of abnormality varies between cultures.

  • e.g. African-Caribbean’s in Britain diagnosed as psychologically ill on basis of behaviour, e.g. hallucinations perceived as normal in subculture.

  • challenges bias and validity of diagnostic tools in the UK.

• attachment:

  • Ainsworth’s strange situation - ethnocentric - designed in America to assess attachment types - assumes has same meaning for infants from other cultures.

  • cross cultural research found differences in findings across culture, e.g. German children demonstrated higher rate of insecure-avoidant - children encouraged to be more independent and therefore respond differently.

  • challenges the validity, universality and methodology in explaining and understanding attachment.

cultural relativism

• argues that behaviour can only be properly understood if culture is taken into consideration.

• social norms are culturally relative and context is vital in understanding behaviour.

• attachment type: only understood if consider childrearing and parenting styles are taken into account - attachment is culturally relative.

• psychological disorders affected by culture, e.g. anxiety informed by culture in what is likely to cause fear, e.g. Japan - anxiety disorder based on the fear of upsetting others, but in UK this would be classed as social anxiety.

discussion - needs to be recognised

• one way of dealing with culture bias is recognising when this occurs.

• Smith and Bond (1988):

  • surveyed research on social psychology in a text book and found 66% research studies were American, 32% European and 2% from the rest of the world.

• 2010 - found that 67% ps in research are American psychology undergraduates - research is unrepresentative - can be improved through sampling different cultural groups.

• by recognising and therefore improving research methods and sampling, this can be improved.

discussion - negative implications

• negative implications of reinforcing/validating damaging stereotypes.

• tests formed with cultural bias may only advantage ps from the culture it came from.

• e.g. Americans more likely to perform well on IQ test constructed in America → affects attitudes on intelligence of other cultures suggesting Americans possess higher intelligence → findings invalid and inaccurate and could contribute to negative stereotypes.

discussion - more progress in research

• difficult to approach research completely objectively without any level of conscious or unconscious bias, however - researchers give more consideration and increased understanding helps reduce ethnocentrism.

• psychologists today often well-travelled and hold international conferences to exchange research and ideas across cultures - aims to minimise effects.

• development of indigenous psychology - aims to draw on experiences of those in different cultural contexts, e.g. Afrocentrism emphasises importance of recognising African context of behaviours and attitudes.

• however - could still be biased views of behaviours and new forms of ethnocentrism with same issues they were aiming to replace.