Aleena Ahmed
Intro - Culture is rules, customs, morals and ways of interacting that bind
members of society, which can retrain how we think and feel. Cultural bias is
when individuals from one culture make assumptions about behaviour from
another culture based on their own norms and practices. Often, theories
developed in one culture have been applied inappropriately to other cultures,
meaning research findings interpreted from a single cultural viewpoint have
been generalised to others, so conclusions are biased and unrepresentative. This
can cause psychological research to misrepresent individuals and behaviour.
Cross cultural studies - Cultural bias can be shown through cross cultural
studies which aim to investigate if cultural practices impact behaviour by
comparing individuals across cultures. They are a useful method for identifying
the universality or cultural specificity of human behaviours. Buss (1989)
conducted a large-scale cross-cultural study on sex differences in human mate
preferences, gathering data from over 10,000 participants across 37 cultures. He
found consistent trends: men across cultures tended to prioritise youth and
physical attractiveness, whilst women valued financial prospects, ambition, and
industriousness. This suggests that certain mate preferences may be
evolutionary and therefore innate. To reduce cultural bias, Buss ensured the
study was carefully designed - each country had indigenous researchers
conducting interviews, and a three step translation process was used to make
sure the questionnaire was accurately adapted into each language. However,
despite these strengths, the study is not free from criticism. Some argue that
even cross-cultural research can carry ethnocentric biases, as the underlying
theories and constructs being measured - like attractiveness or ambition - may
not be understood or valued the same way across all cultures. There's also the
issue of imposed etic, where a Western research design is applied universally
without regard for local meaning. Additionally, although the study included many
countries, it may not have captured diversity within cultures themselves, raising
concerns about representativeness. Overall, while cross-cultural studies like
Buss' attempt to mitigate cultural bias and are valuable for identifying potentially
universal behaviours, they should still be considered and evaluated for subtle
forms of ethnocentrism and methodological limitations.
Ethnocentrism - Another factor of cultural bias is ethnocentrism which is
defined by an individual such as the psychologist performing the study using
their cultures conventions as the norm or generalising them across multiple
cultures. This of course leads to a plethora of pertinent issues within the
psychological discourse, for instance, this form of cultural bias places one culture
on top of another and aims to use measures associated with the USA for instance
as a universal metric which negates and invalidates valid cultural disparities and
differences. This may be difficult to avoid with the nature of conducting an
efficient and effective experiment as it naturally caters towards the studies
culture of origin. However, if not dealt with this will surely lead to issues of
veracity especially within the external validity of the study such as population
validity and even in some instances internal validity as participants may not
understand certain idioms or conventions of one culture such as Kohlberg's
dilemmas. An issue of Ethnocentrism can be seen within Kohlberg's study of
moral development, the study uses a system of interviews using scenarios from
medieval tales which are indigenous tales or at the very least closely linked to
both American and British culture. However, Kohlberg, despite this issue, uses
the same methodology in other countries such as Taiwan, Mexico and Turkey.
This fails to account for the moral development of other cultures and how they
develop as Kohlberg is essentially stating the western WEIRD conventions are a
Intro - Culture is rules, customs, morals and ways of interacting that bind
members of society, which can retrain how we think and feel. Cultural bias is
when individuals from one culture make assumptions about behaviour from
another culture based on their own norms and practices. Often, theories
developed in one culture have been applied inappropriately to other cultures,
meaning research findings interpreted from a single cultural viewpoint have
been generalised to others, so conclusions are biased and unrepresentative. This
can cause psychological research to misrepresent individuals and behaviour.
Cross cultural studies - Cultural bias can be shown through cross cultural
studies which aim to investigate if cultural practices impact behaviour by
comparing individuals across cultures. They are a useful method for identifying
the universality or cultural specificity of human behaviours. Buss (1989)
conducted a large-scale cross-cultural study on sex differences in human mate
preferences, gathering data from over 10,000 participants across 37 cultures. He
found consistent trends: men across cultures tended to prioritise youth and
physical attractiveness, whilst women valued financial prospects, ambition, and
industriousness. This suggests that certain mate preferences may be
evolutionary and therefore innate. To reduce cultural bias, Buss ensured the
study was carefully designed - each country had indigenous researchers
conducting interviews, and a three step translation process was used to make
sure the questionnaire was accurately adapted into each language. However,
despite these strengths, the study is not free from criticism. Some argue that
even cross-cultural research can carry ethnocentric biases, as the underlying
theories and constructs being measured - like attractiveness or ambition - may
not be understood or valued the same way across all cultures. There's also the
issue of imposed etic, where a Western research design is applied universally
without regard for local meaning. Additionally, although the study included many
countries, it may not have captured diversity within cultures themselves, raising
concerns about representativeness. Overall, while cross-cultural studies like
Buss' attempt to mitigate cultural bias and are valuable for identifying potentially
universal behaviours, they should still be considered and evaluated for subtle
forms of ethnocentrism and methodological limitations.
Ethnocentrism - Another factor of cultural bias is ethnocentrism which is
defined by an individual such as the psychologist performing the study using
their cultures conventions as the norm or generalising them across multiple
cultures. This of course leads to a plethora of pertinent issues within the
psychological discourse, for instance, this form of cultural bias places one culture
on top of another and aims to use measures associated with the USA for instance
as a universal metric which negates and invalidates valid cultural disparities and
differences. This may be difficult to avoid with the nature of conducting an
efficient and effective experiment as it naturally caters towards the studies
culture of origin. However, if not dealt with this will surely lead to issues of
veracity especially within the external validity of the study such as population
validity and even in some instances internal validity as participants may not
understand certain idioms or conventions of one culture such as Kohlberg's
dilemmas. An issue of Ethnocentrism can be seen within Kohlberg's study of
moral development, the study uses a system of interviews using scenarios from
medieval tales which are indigenous tales or at the very least closely linked to
both American and British culture. However, Kohlberg, despite this issue, uses
the same methodology in other countries such as Taiwan, Mexico and Turkey.
This fails to account for the moral development of other cultures and how they
develop as Kohlberg is essentially stating the western WEIRD conventions are a
