culture bias (copy)

what is culture bias?

• culture is the variety of beliefs and patterns of behavior shared by a group of people

• historically, psychology has been dominated by white middle class American males

• research findings and theories have been generalized as though culture does not make a difference

what is ethnocentrism?

• seeing the world from only one cultural perspective

• believing that this perspective is normal and correct

what is cultural relativism?

• insists that behavior can only be properly understood if the cultural context is taken into consideration

• any study that draws its sample from only one cultural context such as American students, then generalizes the findings to all people is suspect

evaluate

• Ainsworth Strange Situation is an example of ethnocentric research

• assessed attachment types and assumed that it would apply to infants of other cultures as it does for American children

• German children were more avoidant because German mothers encouraged more independent behavior

• imposed etic- techniques used in one culture was imposed onto others

• to deal with cultural bias is to recognize when it occurs

• Smith and Bond looked at 1998 surveys of European textbooks of social psychology

• they found that

• 66% were American

• 32% were European

• 2% were from the rest of the world

• suggests that psychological research has been severely unrepresentative

• real world application

• leads to validating damaging stereotypes

• US army used an IQ test that was culturally bias to the white majority

• the test showed that African American were at the bottom of the IQ score

• this had negative effects on the attitudes towards African Americans