Psychological studies Essay

Culture bias is a term which covers several types of bias in psychology. It can be used to refer to judgements and prejudices about certain cultures, or methodological biases which lead to such biased conclusions. For example, although a method of research may be developed and found to be reliable in one culture, the same may not be true in another. Culture bias in methodology prevents us from being able to identify innate behaviour in cross-cultural research. One type of culture bias is ethnocentrism, which is the tendency to use one’s own culture as a basis for judgements about others. Eurocentrism, ethnocentrism from the perspective of Western cultures, is particularly widespread in modern Psychology, as it is commonplace for findings based solely on, for example, American participants to be generalised to people across the globe. The relevance of psychological research carried out in Western countries to the wider world is questionnable. A large amount of this issue is a result of methodology. Because mundane realism and ecological validities have so much effect on the generalisation of findings, in order for findings to be relevant across cultures, the methodology must hold these characteristics no matter which culture it is carried out in. Failure to do so may lead to false conclusions, which by definition hinder the main goal of Psychology; that is, the ability to understand human behaviour. A prominent piece of research that often receives attention for its culture bias is that of Ainsworth & Bell (1970). The ‘strange situation’ research method used in their study of infant attachments, and their subsequent conclusions, have received criticism for eurocentrism. The strange situation is used to observe levels of distress and other behaviours in an infant upon, for example, separation from a parent. This may itself be culture biased because of its individualist nature. If an infant is used to interaction with others, like in Israeli kibbutzim, then separation from a parent will be much less stressful in the ‘strange situation’; but this may not imply that the infant is less attached to its parent. The classifications drawn by Ainsworth & Bell are also culturally biased, because they explicitly state which type of attachment is desirable (secure) and which types are undesirable (insecure). This, combined with the eurocentrism of the methodology itself, has led to parenting styles and infant attachments in some cultures to be mislabelled as inferior to those of the United States, and yet no significant negative effects related to attachments have been observed in such cultures. Another study frequently criticised for eurocentrism is Milgram’s (1963) study into obedience, in which participants were deceived into believing that they were required to administer high-voltage electric shocks to a confederate. In a Smith & Bond’s (1998) comparison of replications of the same study in different cultures, it was shown that there were differences between cultures in how many people obeyed the researcher in the experiment. For example, 65% of Americans, compared with 85% of Germans, 40% of Australian males, 16% of Australian females and 62% of Jordanians conformed. This indicates cultural differences, meaning that the Milgram’s conclusions may hold cultural bias; but at the same time such cultural differences may not actually exist. It may be that the research method is not suitable for all of the cultures, or that the research method was carried out in different ways in different cultures. The method used was criticised for being unrepresentative of real life in Western cultures, and so it is likely that it is also unrepresentative of real life in other cultures (such as that of Jordan), or even that the differences between the research environment and real life as even more significant in other cultures. We cannot be sure about the members of these cultures until such differences are ruled out. Many theories have also been criticised for their culturally biased nature. Economic exchange theories of relationship development and maintenance particularly fall under this category, as, according to Moghaddam (1998), they only apply to Western relationships, and even then only to people in short-term relationships and with high mobility. It may be that relationship theories such as this apply only to individualist cultures and are not suitable for describing relationships in collectivist cultures. However, placing a culture on the ‘individualism-collectivism continuum’ is not as easy as first thought. In relationship theories, the US if often cited as an individualist culture and Japan as a collectivist culture; but when Takano & Osaka (1999) reviewed 15 studies to compare the two nations, only 14 studies supported the distinction. This indicates that even relationship theories which allow for differences between individualist and collectivist cultures are biased because they underestimate the role of situational factors and overestimate that of personal characteristics when analysing of behaviour. Another theory frequently noted for its culture bias is Kohlberg’s (1976) theory of moral understanding. This stage theory describes morality from a very Western, democratic perspective. However, these morals may not be held in other parts of the world, meaning that the theory may lack relevance in the wider world. When Snarey (1985) studied traditional village societies, only the first four stages from Kohlberg’s theory were found to be present, with the stage post-conventional reasoning being completely absent. On fact, it was fount that many moral judgements from some cultures did not fit into any of Kohlberg’s stages, suggesting that his theory does not account for other forms of reasoning.