PY4 - Psychology: Controversies, Topics and Applications
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PY4 - Psychology: Controversies, Topics and Applications
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This essay is based on one of the controversial questions in component 3 on Eduqas A-level psychology, and this is an essay example including the structure and how to conclude throughout the essay itself. The question is from a past paper (2018)
PY4 - Psychology: Controversies, Topics and Applications
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A-Level Psychology Eduqas
Controversy Question
To what extent do you agree that psychology is culturally biased (25)
Culture bias is known to be the act of interpreting and judging behaviour and psychological
characteristics of one culture by holding them to standards of their own. Much of the research
carried out has been on white American or European participants and were conducted by western
psychologists which led the results been applied to all people the world over depending on the
behaviour being investigated this may or may not be appropriate.
However, one way in which cultural bias has been reduced in psychological studies is conducting
cross cultural studies. This allows to see whether cultural practises affect behaviour. For example, a
natural experiment may take place where the independent variable is child rearing techniques being
different in other cultures and the dependent variable is behaviour (aggression) this allows the
researcher to see if variations in levels of aggression are due to different cultures having different
child rearing techniques as well as enables the fact that behaviour is innate and where behaviour is
the same in all cultures suggesting it must be a part of our genetics. A study conducted by Buss
(1989) looked at relationships in 36 different countries and found same mate preferences where
men look for youth and good looks and woman look for resources and ambition. This study
demonstrates how some particular research does not vary across cultures and humans can all
cognitively agree with a social norm, not considering cultural differences. however, psychologists can
misinterpret participants understanding, in Buss’s study he interviewed participants from 36
countries using an indigenous researcher, in the study collaborators had employed 3 bilingual
speakers who 1 translated original questionnaire from English into native language two translated
the answers back into English but the number of bilingual speakers is comparatively low as he
conducted the study in 36 countries with over 10,000 participants and using only 3 bilingual speaker
meant they can easy fail to understand local practises.
Additionally, another example is Kohlberg's study of moral development using his moral dilemmas
was another cross-cultural comparison. He discovered in Mexico and Taiwan children were the same
in terms of morally developing in comparison to US children expect development was a little slower,
but it's hard to imagine that dilemmas made sense to other cultural groups creating imposed etic
bias and culturally biased research, so the use of psychological tests and techniques developed in
one culture and used in another which is also known as imposed etic can make findings not
representative to certain cultures. On the other hand, cultural bias can be overcome by using a
derived etic approach this is where the acknowledgement of the role of cultural factors and
recognises the human behaviour that varies from culture to culture therefore it is not right to use
the same methodology for every culture. Therefore, the effective use of cross-cultural studies can
decrease cultural bias in psychology by interpreting a derived etic approach to the study.
However, many psychologists can confuse differences and bias as many studies illustrate that they
found differences between human cultural groups but at the same time they were culturally biased.
For example, Myers and Diener found that People in individualist cultures reports subjective well-
being than in collectivist cultures - in individualist culture people are more concerned with individual
needs, whereas collectivist cultures focus on needs of the group, but finding a difference in
subjective well-being could be due to cultural bias seeing that if it's measured using questionnaire
designed by western researchers which is known to be an imposed etic approach then questions are
probably based on western individualist assumptions of what makes up subjective well-being. As a
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