Cultural Bias Essay

Discuss the view that research practices in psychology are culturally bias. (30)

Cultural bias occurs if psychological research when the psychologist uses participants from only one culture and then generalises it to others, without validation. There are two main types of cultures which psychologist have studied, these are individualist and collectivist. Individualistic culture emphasises the importance of an individual whereas collectivist cultures (who are more specifically eastern societies) emphasise the importance of the group. However this can be criticized as being to over simplistic and ignoring individual and cultural differences. Ethnocentrism is the use of our own ethnic/cultural group as the basis for judgement about other groups. Eurocentrism is when Psychologists place emphasis on European theories/ideas at the expense of those of other cultures. They assume that Western concepts are superior to those of others, so as a result Western research is applied to other cultures, and is seen as a universal view of human behaviour.

On of the ways that bias can occur is when emics and etics get mistaken for eachother. Etic is where views from one culture are considered to be universal. One example of this is the study of moral development by Kohlberg. Kohlberg theory is seen as a universal description of human behaviour, members of different cultures all go through the same stages in the same order. However Kohlberg description of the six stages can be seen as ideologically bias towards Western cultures. Emic is where there are specific views that vary from culture to culture. These tend to have been ignored due to the increase of etic. An example of this is a study showing Emic was Cole's (1970) study of research into intelligence which investigated how objects were sorted into groups. Western sorted by category. African sorted by usefulness which suggests intelligence is different in various cultures.

A cross-cultural study is a kind of natural experiment in which the IV is different cultural practices and the DV is a behaviour, such as attachment. This type of research can be viewed as limited because there are more ethical issues to consider, such as conducting ‘socially sensitive research’, research that might have direct social consequences for the participants involved. Another way this type of research is limited is in considering the reliability and validity of the studies conducted. Reiablity can be hard to ensure because researches do not have enough recourses to for example send out multiple questionnaire, they would only be able to send one to each participant. Validity can be hard to ensure because the countries you study will have different languages, this means that extensive efforts will have to made to ensure that they understand the questions, and that questions have been adapted to match local customs. Also the truthfulness of the participants could be affected by social desirable bias. These factors could all affect the validity of the research.

Mead studied tribes in New Guinea and researched gender development. She found that in the Mundugumor tribe, they exhibited masculine characteristics as both men and women were aggressive, in the Arapesh tribe they exhibited feminine traits as both men and women were emotional and nonaggressive, in the Tchambuli their was a gender reversal when compared with western cultures as it was found men did housework and gossiped while women hunted and ran the village. This is an example of an imposed etic as she used her views from western society to evaluate what she considered masculine and feminine behaviour. It is also an example of Eurocentric. The cultural bias undermines the validity of her research.

Racial bias occurs when psychological research is bias towards the psychologist race. There are many ways in which racial bias can occur, here are some examples. In studies where tribes have been evaluated, the specific tribe names are not been specified this is seen as an insult. Also in some studies their behaviour is described as "primitive" this is a cultural stereotype. The word "tribe" is an issue, as people typically think of very underdeveloped behaviour when thinking of tribes, which can lead to stereotypical views. Also no one refers to western cultures as tribes so this is another example of cultural bias. However views are beginning to change over time as racial bias and patronising approaches are less likely today than 50 years ago. So studies conducted today have less chance of racial bias.

In conclusion cultural bias is very problematic and even though it has got better over time the problem it still very real today as you can tell from many psychological studies. If future research is to be un-bias to cultures, then it must start to consider sub-cultural variations, this would also increase the reliability and validity of the research and make to possible to generalise to all humans.