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Gender and Culture in Psychology: Cultural bias - Coggle Diagram
Gender and Culture in Psychology: Cultural bias
Universality and Bias
to interpreted all occurrence through ones own culture ignoring the chances of cultural differences might have on behaviour
Joseph Henrich reviewed hundred of studies in leading psychology journals and found 68% of research came from united states and 96% from industrial nations
psycologist claim to have discovered 'facts' about human behaviour but studies show what we know has stron cultral bias
henrich et al created a term WEIRD to describe the group of people most likely to to be studied by psychologist- westerned, educated from industrial rich democracies
if norm of behaviour is set by WEIRD then beahviour from non WIERD group is inevitably classed as unusual or abnormal
Ethnocentrism
ethnocentrism is belief in the superiority of one's cultural group suggesting that people from us and europe have presented an ethnocentric view of human behaviour
Mary Ainsworth and Silvias Bells strange situation
conducted research on attachment and was characterised by the babies showing secure attachment. However this ked to misinterpretation as other countries deviated from american norm
Japanese babies were more likely to be classed as insecurely attached as it was likely that this finding was due to the fact that japanese babies were rarely separated from their mother
cultural relativism
john berry has drawn distinction between etic and emic approaches in study of human behaviour
etic- looks at behaviour from outside given culture and attempts to describe those behaviour as universal
Ainsworth and Bell research is an example of an imposed etic as they studied behaviour from ones own culture and then assumed the ideal attachment could be applied universally
emic- functions from the inside of a culture and identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture
berry argues that psychology has often been guilty of an imposed etic approach arguing that theories, models and concepts are universal when actual came through emnic research inside a single culture
suggests that psycologist should be mindful of cultural relativism and that the things they discover mahy only make sense form perspective of the culture within which they discovered
Evaluation
Most influenced classical studies in psychology are cultural biased
Asch's and milgram original studies were conducted exclusively with US participants. replications of these studies pored different results
asch type experiment in collectivist cultures found significantly higher rates of conformity that the original studies in the US
suggesting our understanding of topics such as social influences is only applicable to individualist cultures
however it is argued that individualist-collectivist culture does not apply anymore as Yohtaro Takano and Eiko Osaka found that 14 out of 15 studies that compared to US and Japan found no evidence of individualist or collectivist
suggests that cultural bias in research may be less of an issue in more recent psychological research
Emergence of cultural psychology
cultural psychologist stride to avoid ethnocentric assumptions by taking an emic approach and conducting research from inside a culture, often alongside local researchers using cultural based techniques
suggests that modern psychologists are mindful of the dangers of cultural bias and are taking steps to avoid it
Ethnic stereotyping and has led to prejudice against groups of people
Stephan jay gould explained how the first intelligence tests led to eugenic social policies in the US. psychologists used the WW1 to pilot their first IQ test on 1.75 million army recruits and many items on the test were ethnocentrism for example assuming everyone would know the presidents of US
results from recruits from south-eastern europe and african american received lowest scores. These poor scores were not taken as a sign of the unfair testing but used to inform racisms about the genetic inferiority of particular cultures and ethnic groups. They were deemed 'mentally unfit' in comparison to white majority and denied educational opportunities
illustrates how cultural bias can be used to justify prejudice and discrimination towards certain cultural and ethnic groups