Culture bias

Culture bias refers to a tendency to ignore cultural differences and interpret all phenomena through the lens of ones own culture.

Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism is seeing the world from ones own cultural perspective and believing that this one perspective is both normal and correct. The consequence of ethnocentrism may be viewing other cultures a abnormal/inferior.

In the topic of attachment, Ainsworths strange situation is an example of a piece of ethnocentric research. It was developed to assess attachment types by US researchers based on us norms and thought to be applicable everywhere. In later meta analyses, insecure avoidant attachment type was ogre in remand. This has negative implications on German parents as they are seen to be old and inferior according to US norms.

Cultural Relativism

Cultural relativism insists that behaviours can be properly understood only if cultural context is taken into consideration.

For example, in sz certain ethnic groups were more likely to be diagnosed with sz if the context of their culture was ignored. As a result, the DSM 5 includes culture bound syndromes eg Koro in order to reduce culture bias and improve the validity of diagnosis. his is an example of how important cultural relativism (taking a persons culture into account) is within areas of psychology. Thi also suggests mental illness is not a universally applied concept.

Evaluation

One issue is that cultural bias in research can have significant real world affects by for example amplifying and validating negative stereotypes. The US army used an IQ test before ww1 which was biased towards the dominant white majority. The test showed that African Americans had the lowest iq as their culture wasn’t taking into context , which led to discrimination. his highlights the negative impact that culturally biased research can have

One strength of acknowledging culturally biased research is the heightened awareness of cultural diversity has led to indigenous psychologies: theories drawing specifically on the particular experiences of different people in a cultural context. one example of this is Afrocentrism, a movement suggesting that since all black people have roots in Africa, theories about them must acknowledge the African context of behaviours and attitudes. hi is a strength as it has led t the emergence of theories that are more relevant to the lives of not only Africans but also those with far removed African origins. Also the development of indeginus psychologies is seen as a stretch since it improves population validity.

Compromise

To avoid culture bias, we must not attempt to apply findings to cultures who aren’t represented in the research, and use researchers who are familiar with the upturn being investigated. We must also carry out cross cultural studies rather than only using a sole culture and take a reflective approach to research (being aware of our own biases).