Cultural Bias in Psychology

Cultural Bias: Refers to a tendency to ignore cultural differences and interpret all phenomena through the 'lens' of your own culture

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

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

Many people argue that although psychology may claim to have unearthed 'truths' about people's behaviour all over the world, in reality, findings from the study only apply to the particular groups of people who were studied.

Critics argue that mainstream psychology has generally ignored culture as an important infulence on human behaviour, and in doing so, has mistakenly assumed that findings from studies carried out in a Western culture can be applied all over the world. Examples of this include Asch's study into conformity and Milgram's study into obedience.

If the norm or standard for a particular behviour is judged from the standpoint of only one particular culture, then any cultural differences in behaviour that seem to deviate from the so-called standard, will be seen as abnormal, inferior or unusual.

Ethnocentrism is a belief in the superiority of a particular cultural group. In psychological reserach, this may be communicated through a view that any behaviours that don't conform to the (usually Western) model are seen as deficient or underdeveloped.

An example of ethnocentrism is Ainswroth's Strange Situation. Ainsworth (an American psychologist) identified that the key defoning variable of attachment type is the child's experience of anxiety on separation. She suggested that the secure attachemnt type was characterised by the infant showing moderate amounts of distress when left alone by the mother figure.

However, this led to misinterpretation of of child-rearing practices in other countries which were seen to deviate from the American 'norm'. For example, German mothers were seen as cold and rejecting, rather than encouraging independence in their children.This meant that the Strange Situation was deemed an inapropriate way of measuring attachment type for non-US children.

Ainsworth's research is an example of an imposed etic in psychology. In assuming that the US-based model of attachment was the norm, Ainsworth imposed her own cultural understanding on the rest of the world.

An etic approach looks at behaviour from outside of a given culture and and attempts to describe those behaviours as universal. An emic approach functions from within a culture and culture and identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture.

It has been argued that psychology has been guilty of imposing an etic approach, when the results came from emic reserach. This suggests that psychologists should be more mindful of the cultural relativism of their research. The things they discover may only make sense within the culture they were discovered. Being able to recognise this is a way of avoiding cultural bias in reserach.

Individualism and collectivism: In the past, psychologists ahve made references to individualist cultures (e.g. the US), where the focus is on the individual, and collectivist cultures (e.g. China), where the focus is on the group or society. Critics have argued, however, that global interconnectedness means this distinction no longer applies. Takano and Osaka (1999) found that in 14/15 studies that compared the US and Japan, there was no evidence of traditional distinction between individualism and collectivism. This may suggest that cultural bias in research is less of an issue than it once was

Cultural relativism Vs universality: Despite the concept of an imposed etic, it shouldn't be assumed that all psychology is culturally relative and that there is no such thing as universal human behaviour. Research suggests that basic facial expressions for emotions are the same all over the human and animal world. Ainswoth's Strange Situation has shown us that some features of human attachment, such as interactional synchrony, are universal. This shows that a full understanding of human behaviour requires the study of both universals and variation among individuals and groups.

Unfamiliarity with resarch tradition: When conducting research in Western culture, participant's familioarity with the general aims of the research is assumed. Howver, the same knowledge in svientific testing may not extend to cultures that don't have the same historical experience of reserach. For this reason, demand characteristics may be exaggerated when working with members of the local population, so may have an adverse affect on the validity of the research.

Operationalisation of variables: When conducting research in different cultures, the variables under review may not be experienced in the same way by all participants. For example, in China, the invasion of personla space is seen as normal, but in the West, this can be seen as confrontational. This may affect interactions between the researcher and participants, or between Western and non-Western participants in cross-cultural studies.