Cultural Bias

Cultural Bias: A tendency to interpret all phenomena through the ‘lens’ of one’s own culture, ignoring the effects that cultural differences might have on behaviour.

Culture Bias Example: Heinrich et al reviewed hundreds of studies in leading psychology journals and found that 68% of research participants came from the US and 96% from industrialised nations. He coined the term WEIRD people as most likely to be studied and if a standard of behaviour is set by these people, non-westernised cultures are seen as ‘abnormal’

WEIRD People: Westernised, Educated people from Industrialised, Rich Democracies

Ethnocentrism: Judging other cultures by the standards and values of one’s culture. In its extreme form, it is the belief in the superiority of one’s own culture which may lead to prejudice and discrimination towards other cultures

Ethnocentrism example: Ainsworth’s Strange Situation was developed to assess attachment types and many researchers assumed the S.S. has the same meaning for infants from other cultures. German people showed higher rates of insecure-avoidant attachment which led to the misrepresentation of rearing practices in other countries which deviated from American norms as German mothers were seen as cold and rejecting instead of simply encouraging independence from their children.

Cultural Relativism: The idea that norms and values, as well as ethics and moral standards, can only be meaningful and understood within specific social and cultural contexts

Cultural Relativism example: Sternberg (1958) pointed out that coordination skills that may be essential to life in a preliterate society (eg. motor skills required for shooting a bow and arrow) may be mostly irrelevant to intelligent behaviour for most in a literate and more developed society and so, therefore, the only way to understand intelligence is to take cultural context into account.

Imposed Etic: Studying behaviour unsure one culture and then assuming the results and method of assessment can be applied universally

Emic: Functions within certain cultures, aiming to identify behaviours relative to that culture

Classic Studies (Culture): Most influential studies are culturally-biased. For example, Asch and Milgram’s studies only used American participants and replications in different cultures produced different results. In collectivist cultures, conformity rates were higher.

Cultural Psychology: Cultural Psychology is the study of how people shape and are shaped by their cultural experiences. Cultural psychologists want to avoid ethnocentric assumptions by taking an emic approach. Modern psychologists are mindful of the dangers of cultural bias.

Ethnic Stereotyping: Stephen Jay Gould (1981) explained that the first intelligence tests led to eugenic social policies in the US as psychologists used army recruitment testing in WW1 to use the first IQ tests on 1.75 million. Because the items of the test were ethnocentric, those from south-eastern Europe and African-Americans received the lowest scores which were used to inform racist discourse about the genetic inferiority of particular cultural and ethnic groups.

Relativism v. Universality: Cross-cultural research may challenge the dominant individualistic way of thinking and viewing the world. Being able to see that some common knowledge and concepts are not hardwired may provide a better understanding of human nature. However, it shouldn’t be assumed all psychology is culturally relative as research suggests that basic facial expressions for emotions are the same all over the human and animal world.