Specification: Culture in Psychology – universality and bias. Cultural bias, including ethnocentrism and cultural relativism.
Cultural bias in Psychology
Culture can be defined as the values, beliefs and patterns of behaviour shared by a group of people. A variety of factors shape culture and these different factors are reflected in the differences between various cultures. Historically, psychology has been dominated by white, middle-class American males, who have monopolised psychology both as researchers and participants. However, research findings and theories have been generalised, as if culture makes no real difference.
Cultural bias is the tendency to judge people in terms of one's cultural assumptions. In psychology, cultural bias takes the same two forms as gender bias. Alpha bias occurs when a theory assumes that cultural groups are profoundly enduring differences must always inform psychological research and understanding. Beta bias, on the other hand, occurs when real cultural differences are ignored or minimised, and all people are assumed to be the same, resulting in universal research designs and conclusions that mistakenly assume that all cultures are identical.
Exam Hint: The terms alpha and beta bias are only required for gender bias, and while it is useful to understand these terms, you are only required to understand ethnocentrism and cultural relativism for the Culture in Psychology subtopic.
Another way to consider cultural bias is through the distinction between ethnocentrism and cultural relativism.
Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism means seeing the world only from one’s cultural perspective and believing that this one perspective is both normal and correct. Ethnocentrism is an often-inadvertent lack of awareness that other ways of seeing things can be as valid as one’s own. For example, definitions of abnormality vary from culture to culture. Rack (1984) claims that African-Caribbeans in Britain are sometimes diagnosed as ‘mentally ill’ based on behaviour which is perfectly normal in their subculture, and this is due to the ignorance of African-Caribbean subculture on the part of white psychiatrists.
Ainsworth's Strange Situation is another example of ethnocentric research. The Strange Situation was developed to assess attachment types, and many researchers assume that the Strange Situation has the same meaning for infants from other cultures, as it does for American children. German children, on average, demonstrate a higher rate of insecure-avoidant behaviour. However, it is not the case that German mothers are more insensitive than American mothers. Instead, they value and encourage independent behaviour, and therefore their children react differently in the Strange Situation. The Strange Situation has been described as an imposed etic, which is when a technique or theory is developed in one culture and then imposed on another.
Extension: An etic approach looks at behaviour from the outside, whereas the emic approach considers behaviour from the inside.
Cultural relativism
Cultural relativism insists that behaviour can be properly understood only if the cultural context is taken into consideration. Therefore, any study which draws its sample from only one cultural context (like American college students) and then generalises its findings to all people everywhere, is suspect.
According to this viewpoint, the meaning of intelligence is different in every culture. For example, Sternberg (1985) pointed out that coordination skills that may be essential to life in a preliterate society (e.g., those motor skills required for shooting a bow and arrow) may be mostly irrelevant to what is considered intelligent behaviour for most people in a literate and more “developed” society.
Evaluation
Culturally biased research can have significant real-world effects by, for example, amplifying and validating damaging stereotypes. The US Army used an IQ test before WWI, which was culturally biased toward the dominant white majority. Unsurprisingly, the test showed that African Americans were at the bottom of the IQ scale and this had a negative effect on the attitudes of Americans toward this group of people, which highlights the negative impact that culturally biased research can have.
One way to deal with cultural bias is to recognise it when it occurs. Smith and Bond found, in their 1998 survey of European textbooks on social psychology, that 66% of the studies were American, 32% European, and only 2% from the rest of the world. This suggests that much psychological research is severely unrepresentative and can be significantly improved by simply selecting different cultural groups to study.
Contemporary psychologists are significantly more open-minded and well-travelled than previously and have an increased understanding of other cultures at both a personal and professional level. For example, international psychology conferences increase the exchange of ideas between psychologists which has helped to reduce ethnocentrism in psychology and enabled a more nuanced understanding and appreciation of cultural relativism.
This heightened awareness of cultural diversity has led to the development of ‘indigenous psychologies’: theories drawing explicitly on the particular experiences of people in different cultural contexts. One example is Afrocentrism, a movement which suggests that because all black people have their roots in Africa, theories about them must recognise the African context of behaviours and attitudes. This is an example of an emic approach, which emphasises the uniqueness of every culture and looks at behaviour from the inside of a particular cultural system. This matters because it has led to the emergence of theories that are more relevant to the lives and cultures of people not only in Africa but also to those far removed from their African origins. The development of indigenous psychologies is often seen as a strength of cultural relativism. Still, there are limitations as well: Are Afrocentric theories not as culturally biased as those they claim to replace?
There has also been some progress in the field of diagnosing mental disorders. Early versions of the American DSM system virtually ignored mental disorders that are found mainly or exclusively in non-American cultures. DSM-IV in 1994 acknowledged the inadequacy of that approach and included a short appendix on culture-bound syndromes found in other parts of the world. However, Kleinman and Cohen (1997) dismissed this appendix as “little more than a sop thrown to cultural psychiatrists and psychiatric anthropologists”. They pointed out that detailed work in several non-Western cultures had uncovered many disorders ignored by DSM-IV. Examples include pa-fend (fear of wind) found in China; amafufunyana (violent behaviour caused by spirit possession) found in South Africa and brain fag (problems in concentrating and thinking produced by excessive study) located in West Africa.
Universality
When a theory is described as universal, it means that it can apply to all people, irrespective of gender and culture. However, this also means that it needs to include real differences.
With gender, this means developing theories that show the similarities and differences between males and females, without devaluing either gender. This may mean using a variety of research methods and considering women in the natural settings in which they function. Regarding culture, one way to achieve universality would be to employ what Berry (1969) described as a derived etic. This is where a series of emic studies take place in local settings, conducted by local researchers using local techniques. Such studies can build up a picture of human behaviour in a similar way to the ethnographic approach taken by anthropologists. This is the study of different cultures using comparisons, as by making comparisons between cultures, we can learn more about a target culture.
Critical thinking
What is the best way to investigate cultural differences? If you wanted to conduct research to look at ‘universals’ and ‘cultural differences’ in attachment behaviour, what would be the best way to do this to avoid cultural bias?
Possible exam questions
Briefly explain what is meant by the term ‘cultural relativism. (2 marks)
Outline two examples of cultural bias in psychological research. (4 marks)
Just before the First World War Yerkes developed Army intelligence tests to assess recruits. The items on the tests were very specific to American culture, and the test results showed that European immigrants fell slightly below White Americans in terms of intelligence and African Americans were at the bottom of the scale with the lowest mental age. With reference to the above example, explain what is meant by ethnocentrism. (4 marks)
Discuss cultural bias in Psychology. (16 marks)
