PY4 - Psychology: Controversies, Topics and Applications
Essay
A-level Psychology - Cultural bias controversies essay
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Course
PY4 - Psychology: Controversies, Topics and Applications
Institution
WJEC
This is a model answer for the ‘cultural bias’ controversy within Psychology, explored in year 13 of the WJEC psychology specification.
This is an A* essay response to the 25 mark exam question.
PY4 - Psychology: Controversies, Topics and Applications
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‘Psychological research is culturally biased’.
Using your knowledge of Psychology discuss the extend to which this statement
is true (25)
A culture is defined as the rules, customs, morals, and ways of
interacting that bind together members of a society or some other
collection of people. Therefore, cultural bias occurs when people of one
culture make assumptions about the behaviour of people from another
culture based on their own cultural norms and practises. Much of
traditional psychology is rooted in western ideas and could
consequently be seen as culturally biased when the results are applied to
other cultures.
Ethnocentrism refers to the use of our own cultural group as a basis for
judgments about other groups; the problem is that this is a natural
tendency. An example of ethnocentrism in psychology and a reason why
psychological research could be argued to be culturally biased is
Ainsworth’s research on the Strange Situation. The Strange Situation
was developed to assess attachment types, and many researchers assume
that the Strange Situation has the same meaning for the infants from
other cultures, as it does for American children. German children, on
average, demonstrate a higher rate of insecure-avoidant behaviour.
However, it is not the case that German mothers are more insensitive
than American mothers. Instead, they value and encourage independent
behaviour, and therefore their children react differently in the Strange
Situation. This is a problem as it means that psychologists might assume
that there are real differences between cultural groups, when in fact
there is not. This is known as “alpha” bias and could cause the practices
of other cultures to be devalued and stereotypes are created which could
lead to prejudice and discrimination. This shows the damaging effects
of psychological research being culturally biased.
However, it could be argued that cross cultural research has found
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