Speaker 1: Hi there, and welcome to this psychology student webinar, this one looking at the issues and debates topic and focusing on culture bias. In this particular webinar, we're gonna focus on three things. We're gonna start with the definitions and provide you with some examples to illustrate those definitions, and you need to be aware of culture bias, ethnocentrism, and cultural relativism. We're then gonna focus on the different types of questions that could occur in the exam, looking at short answer, application, and essay questions, and then actually in the final part of the webinar, we're gonna zoom in on that essay and look at how you might structure and write an essay for the question, discuss cultural bias in psychology for 16 marks. Now, to start with, I've placed the specification on the screen because culture bias actually falls within a topic that has two parts, gender and culture in psychology, and in our previous webinar, we focused on the gender aspect, looking at alpha and beta bias and androcentrism, which is what we looked at last week. Today, we're gonna zoom in and focus on the cultural aspect, looking at the key terms of ethnocentrism and cultural relativism. The reason I've shared the specification with you in this particular webinar is because within culture, you'll find that there's a lot of additional key terms that you might be introduced to in your everyday lessons, and that's great to know those as well. I'm gonna deliberately focus on the ones that are named in the specification and also draw on two key other ones as well because you might find those useful when exploring this topic. So let's start by looking at those key definitions, and as I mentioned, the two key ones in particular are ethnocentrism and cultural relativism. I've put alpha and beta bias in gray because I am gonna introduce you to those only because we've looked at them before and the meaning is essentially the same whether it occurs in gender or whether it occurs in culture, okay? Let's cast our mind back to our last webinar where we explored the idea of gender bias, and we said a gender bias is the differential treatment or representations of males and females based on a stereotype and not a real difference. We then subdivided gender bias into two key terms, and we said an alpha bias is where a theory exaggerates the differences between males or females, and we said think alpha male showing off or exaggerated is a nice way to remember that. We then said a beta bias is the opposite, and it refers to theories that ignore or minimise sex differences, and these theories often assume that the findings apply to both males and females equally, okay? So in this case, it's males ignoring females is typically the case in psychology. So we got alpha bias, which is the exaggeration of differences, beta bias, which is minimising the differences, okay? Now those two key terms apply equally to culture. So if we cast our mind into culture bias now, culture bias is the tendency to judge people in terms of one owns cultural assumptions, okay? And an alpha bias in terms of culture occurs when a theory assumes that cultural groups are profoundly different from one another, okay? So that will be me imposing my sort of European, UK-based assumptions onto other cultures. A beta bias is the opposite. It occurs when real cultural differences are ignored or minimised, and all people are assumed to be the same. This often results in universal research designs in psychology and conclusions, where people try and apply their research designs to other cultures and they don't work. And we'll explore a nice example of that in a moment with Mary Ainsworth's strange situation, okay? So you don't need to know these two particular terms, but they're useful to know because you've encountered them before anyway. So if you'd like to use them, feel free to use those terms because they apply really nicely to culture. So let's zoom in now on the two key terms you need to be aware of. So we said a culture bias, the tendency to judge people in terms of your own cultural assumptions. The first key term you need to be aware of is ethnocentrism. And this means seeing the world only from one's cultural perspective, so your own cultural perspective, and believing that your perspective is both normal and the right perspective. It's the correct one, okay? What that also means is ethnocentrism is the inadvertent lack of awareness that other ways of seeing behaviour can be as valid as your own, okay? So it's really an ignorance to other people's view of the world. Cultural relativism, on the other hand, insists that behaviour can only be understood if we study it in the cultural context and take into account the cultural considerations of the people that live in that culture, okay? So we really need to be in the culture to understand a particular culture, okay? As always, we're going to look at a couple of examples just to really sort of illustrate this and bring this to life. So if we look at the ethnocentrism example, and the picture on the screen might give away the example I'm going to use here, I've already mentioned Ainsworth's strange situation is a really great example of ethnocentric research and a beta bias, for that matter, because the strange situation was developed to assess different attachment types. And many researchers assume that the strange situation has the same meaning, for instance, from other cultures as it does for American children, okay? Now, I've just put the results table from Vannies and Dorn and Kronenberg's research on the screen, and I'm going to zoom into one finding that illustrates this. German children showed the highest rate of insecure avoidant attachment types, okay? Now, that doesn't mean, and this is really important, that German mothers are more insensitive than American mothers. What it instead means is that German mothers value and encourage independent behaviour, and therefore the children react differently in the strange situation, which goes to show that the strange situation is an ethnocentric research tool because it doesn't necessarily work in other cultures. So there we have it, a nice example of ethnocentric research. Moving on, if we think about cultural relativism, we said it insists that behaviour can only be understood if the cultural context is taken into consideration. Now, to give you an example to illustrate this, it's useful to think of intelligence because actually as far back as 1985, Sternberg pointed out that some aspects of intelligence, and he pointed towards coordination skills, are actually really essential in preliterate societies, and actually still that's the case in some tribes around the world today where actually motor coordination skills are really valued as an important skill. However, these motor skills are actually mostly irrelevant intelligent behaviours for people in literate and what we would call more developed societies. So actually in the UK and America, we typically value different skills to motor skills most of the time. Therefore, according to people like Sternberg, the only way that we can understand intelligence is by taking the cultural context into account because if we don't take that cultural context into account, we start to devalue other cultures and actually make inferences about them that might not necessarily be correct, okay? We might argue that they're inferior in terms of intelligence when actually it's just the measure of intelligence that we're using isn't appropriate for that particular culture. So there we have it, the three key terms that you need are on the screen now. So you need to be aware of what cultural bias is, the tendency to judge people in terms of one owns cultural assumptions, ethnocentrism where we see the world from our own cultural perspective and believe that this cultural perspective is normal and correct, and cultural relativism where we insist that behavior can only be understood if the cultural context is taken into consideration. Moving on, we're gonna look at the different types of questions that can occur in the exam, focusing on short answer application and finally the essay question. So you could receive a nice short answer question that just says, briefly explain what is meant by the term cultural relativism for two marks because it is a named part of the specification. You could get a short answer question that says, outline two examples of culture bias in psychological research for four marks. I've made up an application question to show you just to give you an idea of what it could look like. So there's an application question on the screen and it says, just before World War I, Yerkes developed an army intelligence test in order to assess recruits. The items on the test 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. And then in the final part of the webinar, we'll look at that essay question, discuss cultural bias in psychology for 16 marks, okay? So let's take each of these questions one by one, okay? So first one, briefly explain what is meant by the term cultural relativism. Simple definition question here. So really I would just say, cultural relativism is the view that behaviour can only be understood if the cultural context is taken into consideration. Now, if I was in my sort of A-level linear exam at this part of the course, I would be thinking, is this enough to pick me up both marks? Okay, I'll be looking at that thinking, I've only really said one sentence, only given one idea. Is that two marks worth of content? Therefore, I would be inclined to go on further than that, and either do one of two things. You could give a comparison. So you could say cultural relativism is the opposite to ethnocentrism, which is where behaviour is judged from our own cultural perspective. So we've made a nice comparison. The other alternative is to provide an example. And I could say, for example, Sternberg pointed out that coordination skills may be essential to life in a pre-literate society, and may be mostly irrelevant intelligent behaviour for people in literate and more developed societies. And therefore, intelligence should be judged in the context of the culture. So two different ways you can really expand on that to get the additional mark, either by providing a comparison, or giving an example, okay? Let's look at the second question. Outline two examples of cultural bias in psychological research. And there are loads, I gave you one earlier. So you could say, for example, one example of cultural bias in psychology comes from Ainsworth's research into attachment types. The strain situation was developed in America, and many researchers assume that the strain situation had the same meaning for infants in other cultures, which is not always the case, as German children showed a higher rate of insecure avoidant behaviour, because independence is encouraged in the German culture. Another example, and there are loads, and actually I'm thinking social psychology, you've got Milgram, you've got Asch, you've got Zimbardo. And all of those social psychology studies assume that the findings of their research apply to other cultures, when in fact obedience in the case of sort of Milgram, and conformity in the case of sort of Asch and Zimbardo, actually differ in collectivist and individualistic cultures, and that's a nice distinction you can make. So there's loads of other examples you could use to pick up your second example, and your second couple of marks there, okay? Now, in terms of the application question, I'll just read that scenario again. So it says, just before World War I, Yerkes developed an army intelligence test in order to assess potential recruits. The items on the test 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. I would start with my definition of ethnocentrism there, just so then we've got something to attach the rest of our answer to. So I would say ethnocentrism is when a psychologist views the world only from their own cultural perspective, and believes that this one perspective is both normal and correct. Ethnocentrism is the inadvertent lack of awareness that other ways of seeing things can be as valid as one's own, okay? Then we want to do the application bit, and there's a really clear part in the extracts that I've highlighted on screen now, where we can attach our answer to that, okay? And it's the part where it says the items on the test were very specific to an American culture. That gives us the really nice application bit, and this is a question where we can actually use the stem to help us answer the question, to guide our answer. So my second part, I would say the extract states that the items on the test were very specific to American culture, suggesting that Yerkes's view of intelligence was from an American cultural perspective. This explains why European immigrants and African-Americans scored less than Americans, not because they're inferior in terms of intelligence, but because the test was actually culturally biased or ethnocentric, okay? And that would be a nice way of answering that for a four-mark question, okay? Moving on, let's take a look at the essay question. So we've got the potential question of discuss cultural bias in psychology, a nice short question there. As always, discuss really does just mean outline and evaluate. If you're planning that, you've got approximately 20 to 25 minutes to write a response, whereby you'd be looking to write in the region of 500 words, of which, if we're going to divide that up mathematically, you're looking at about 175 words for your knowledge marks, your AO1 marks, and about 325 for your AO3 evaluation marks, okay? Now, with that in mind, I always suggest actually planning a response rather than trying to rote learn and write every single essay out as you're fully aware, okay? Now, my starting point for this, if I was to structure an essay, I would think about my knowledge, and actually, I would define alpha and beta bias. Although they're not named in the specification, they're two key terms that are easy to define and easy to apply to culture. I would also then go on to actually define the key terms that are listed in the specification. So I would define ethnocentrism and maybe give the example of Ainsworth's trade situation if you've got time and you've got the words to write that. And I would also define what cultural relativism is as well, okay? Now, what that looks like is, here's an introduction that really spells that out. So in psychology, cultural bias takes the same two forms as gender bias. Alpha bias occurs when a theory assumes that cultural groups are profoundly different and that recognition of these enduring differences must always inform psychological research and understanding. Beta bias, on the other hand, occurs when real cultural differences are ignored or minimized and all people are assumed to be the same, resulting in universal research designs and conclusions that mistakenly assume that all cultures are the same. Another way to address cultural bias is through the distinction between ethnocentrism and cultural relativism. Ethnocentrism means seeing the world from one's own cultural perspective and believing that this one perspective is both normal and correct. Ethnocentrism is often an inadvertent lack of awareness that other ways of seeing things can be as valid as your own. Notice here that I haven't provided an example and it would have been perfectly valid at this case to go into an example. I was running short on words. This is about 175 words, so I decided not to provide the example. But you could do. You could ignore alpha and beta bias and give an example instead, okay? It goes on to say that cultural relativism insists that behavior can be properly understood only if cultural context is taken into consideration. Therefore, any study that draws a sample from one cultural context, like American college students, and tries to generalize the results to people everywhere is suspicious, okay? There's my introduction. It's about 175 words, but I've got all of the key terms in there nicely defined. What would have really improved, that would have been an example, but within the words we've got, that's a really short, concise, and quite nice introduction, okay? Moving on from that, you need to have in your mind about three evaluation points that you could draw on for an essay of this nature. One of them I find really interesting is this idea of cultural bias in textbooks, and I'll run you through that one in a moment. And there's research that suggests that actually the A-level textbooks that you're probably using to study the course suffer from cultural bias, okay? And that's really, really interesting. Another issue with cultural bias is that they often lead to stereotypes, and that's obviously a negative consequence of what cultural bias does. And then last but not least, I'm going to introduce you to this idea of what's called indigenous psychologies, which is a way we can overcome issues of ethnocentrism by studying on specific cultures around the world, okay? So we'll take each of those in turn. Let's start with the cultural bias in textbooks and how we might phrase that as a nice evaluation paragraph, okay? So we might say that one way to deal with cultural bias is simply to recognise 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% were European, and only 2% were from the rest of the world. Now, firstly, this suggests that psychological research is severely underrepresentative and can greatly be improved by simply selecting different cultural groups. Now, the reason this is relevant is therefore just by appreciating and understanding cultural bias, it can help psychologists to overcome this issue in the future by actually conducting research on different cultures. So it's as simple as that. It's all you need to write for that point. If we move on to our second point, so cultural bias and the idea of stereotypes, another really, really interesting point. What we could say here is that one issue is that culturally biased research can have a significant real-world effect by amplifying and validating damaging stereotypes, okay? So it's giving validity to stereotypes that might not exist really, okay? Now, the US Army used an IQ test before World War I that was culturally biased towards the dominant white majority. Unsurprisingly, the test showed that African-Americans were at the bottom of the IQ scale. This matters because it had a negative effect on the attitude towards African-Americans, okay? Which highlights the negative impact that culturally biased research can have, okay? So really what it's doing is enforcing a stereotype, a prejudice in a group of people on the basis of test results that aren't really valid, okay? So really nice second issue that you can draw on there. The last one, which is one you might not be familiar with, is this idea of indigenous psychologies. And I'll talk you through that one now, a really lovely final point. So one strength of developing knowledge of culturally biased research is that this heightened awareness of diversity has actually led to the development of what we call indigenous psychologies. And these are theories that draw explicitly on the particular experiences of people within their cultural context, okay? So where we study people within their own culture. An example of this is what's called ethnocentrism, a movement that suggests that because all black people have their roots in Africa, theories about them must recognise this African context of behaviour and attitudes, okay? Now, this matters because it's led to the emergence of theories that are more relevant to the lives and cultures of people, not only in Africa, in the case of ethnocentrism, but actually in terms of other cultures around the world, okay, because indigenous psychologies exist in other cultures as well. So the development of indigenous psychologies is often seen as a strength of cultural relativism, okay? Now, for those of you who wanted to sort of push this one step further, what's quite interesting is that actually this is really in effect another limitation because ethnocentrism is really just another example of ethnocentrism, where they're viewing it from one cultural perspective. But in this case, it's seen as a strength, but really it's just reinforcing the argument that actually we're studying cultures within their own culture and just trying to apply results elsewhere that might not apply. So it's a really interesting turnaround at the end here that actually, although we've developed what's called indigenous psychologies to overcome the issue of culture bias and ethnocentrism, in a sense, they are just another example of culture bias, just in a slightly different way, okay? Now, what that essay looks like across two pages is this, okay, so the A01 is highlighted in yellow on screen there, and we've got in green our sort of three separate distinct evaluation points. That comes in 182 words of knowledge, 315, so that means we're just short of the 500 words mark for this particular essay, which is about what we'll be looking to write in sort of the 20, 25 minutes mark, okay? Now, as always, if you want access to that particular essay and the PowerPoint slides from today, we do make those available for students, and you can find those on the TutorToU website. Really hope that you found that webinar useful. Of course, there are more webinars lined up for the future, and you can find those on the TutorToU website, TutorToU.net forward slash psychology forward slash events. Don't forget to follow us on Facebook and on Twitter, and if you need any advice, support, and guidance, do feel free to get in touch, and hopefully see a webinar again soon. Thank you once again.