8.1.1

Culture Bias

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Cultural Bias

Culture is the set of norms, moral values, behavioural norms, social roles, customs and traditions of a group of people.

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Culture and psychology

  • Psychology was developed in Western cultures. Psychologists typically used people that were available to them in studies - people from the same culture. This means that there has historically been a lack of research for comparing people from different cultures.
  • As a consequence, various cultural perspectives and differences have been ignored or underrepresented.
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Possible explanations

  • There are various possible reasons for not having studied other cultures:
    • Psychologists may have viewed other non-Western cultures as being 'primitive' or not worthy of study.
    • Cross-cultural research is expensive, time consuming, and demands many resources. This makes it challenging to conduct.
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Possible explanations cont.

  • It could also be that psychologists made the assumption that other cultures were the same as their own. In other words, behaviours and norms had the same meaning and there was no point in studying them.

Research Methods: Etic

Research methods can cause cultural bias. Berry (1969) identified two approaches in research: etic and emic, both of which could cause cultural bias.

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Etic and emic research

  • There are two approaches in research and both are liable to cultural bias.
    • Etic research is when research based on one culture is generalised and applied to all cultures.
    • Emic research is based on studying a specific culture.
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Etic research

  • Etic research assumes that the results and conclusions drawn from one culture can be universally applied.
  • Universality is the concept where one set of rules/norms/theories are used to explain everything.
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Etic strengths

  • Humans from various cultures do have similarities.
    • Human physiology is fairly consistent across all cultures.
    • Certain behaviours are also universal: language development, aggression levels, and cognitive development.
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Etic weaknesses

  • The vast majority of scientific research involves taking samples of a whole population.
  • For this reason, it is challenging to apply the principles and conclusions drawn from these studies to all cultures.
  • So researchers can be biased because of an imposed etic.

Research Methods: Emic

Research methods can cause cultural bias. There are two approaches in research: etic and emic, both of which could lead to cultural bias.

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Emic research

  • The results and conclusions drawn from these studies are not to be applied to all cultures.
  • The reason for this is that the focus is to study the behaviour within the group and between groups of people within the culture.
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Emic strengths

  • By doing these studies, researchers can avoid cultural bias and bias because of imposed etic.
  • They are not trying to generate universal laws.
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Emic weaknesses

  • But bias can still happen.
  • This is due to researchers over-emphasising the differences between the cultural groups and not looking at the differences within the cultural groups.
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Example study

  • For example:
    • A study that claims ‘people from country Z are kinder than people from country W’.
    • There are most likely people from country Z that are not very kind and people from country W that are kind.
  • It is important to note that the original conclusion was based on an average.
  • So it is important to not forget the variation within the same group. There are always going to be individual differences.

Jump to other topics

1Social Influence

2Memory

3Attachment

4Psychopathology

5Approaches in Psychology

6Biopsychology

7Research Methods

8Issues & Debates in Psychology (A2 only)

9Option 1: Relationships (A2 only)

10Option 1: Gender (A2 only)

11Option 1: Cognition & Development (A2 only)

12Option 2: Schizophrenia (A2 only)

13Option 2: Eating Behaviour (A2 only)

14Option 2: Stress (A2 only)

15Option 3: Aggression (A2 only)

16Option 3: Forensic Psychology (A2 only)

17Option 3: Addiction (A2 only)

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