In one line: Cultural bias is interpreting or measuring the behaviour of one culture through the assumptions of another.
An intelligence test asks children to find the "missing part" of a drawing: a tap with no handle, a tennis court with no net.
A child who has never seen a tap or a tennis court gets those items wrong.
The test records low intelligence. What it has measured is familiarity with one way of life.
Two words for it: Cultural bias: the distortion in the result.
Ethnocentrism: the assumption that produces it, that one's own culture is the reference point.
Like any research bias, it can enter at each stage: in the research question, in the instruments, in the sample, and in the interpretation of the findings.
Remember: A measure made in one culture is not neutral in another.
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Key idea: Research on culture takes either an insider's or an outsider's position. Cultural bias arises when an insider's tool is presented as an outsider's.
Emic: the insider's view
- Describes behaviour in the culture's own terms
- Concepts come from the people studied
- Meaningful, but specific to that culture
- Asking families how they understand "being clever"
Etic: the outsider's view
- Applies universal criteria across cultures
- Seeks what cultures have in common
- Allows comparison, if the criteria really are universal
- Giving one reasoning test in twelve countries
An imposed etic is an emic measure in disguise: developed in one culture, then applied to others as if it were universal.
The drawing test is one. Its items are emic to the culture of its authors, and it was used as an etic measure of intelligence.
Exam tip: An etic approach is not the problem. Comparison needs shared measures.
The problem is an etic that was imposed without checking that it means the same thing everywhere.
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Key idea: In clinical psychology, cultural bias can affect diagnosis, prevalence statistics and treatment, and the people affected are patients.
Three places it shows
Diagnosis
A clinician reads a client's behaviour against her own cultural norms.
In one study, clinicians from two ethnic groups rated the same recorded clients. Each group judged clients from the other culture as more disturbed than that culture's own clinicians did.
Prevalence statistics
Rates of a disorder are counts of diagnoses.
Where symptoms are expressed in a form the criteria do not list, or where people do not bring them to a doctor, the rate is under-estimated.
Treatment
Treatments carry assumptions too: that talking about feelings helps, that the individual and not the family is the client.
Therapies adapted to a client's culture and language tend to be more effective.
The label · The count · The care
The clearest demonstration held the patients constant. The same recorded interviews were shown to psychiatrists in New York and in London. Schizophrenia was diagnosed about twice as often in New York, and mood disorders about twice as often in London.
Nothing about the patients differed. The diagnosis followed the clinicians.
Watch out: A cross-cultural difference in rates has two possible sources.
The populations may differ, or the way they are assessed may differ. Cultural bias is the second.
Key idea: The remedy is not to stop comparing cultures. It is to check that a measure is equivalent before it is used.
Four ways
Start from the inside
Emic research first establishes what a concept means locally. Only then is a measure chosen or built.
Work with local researchers
Researchers who belong to the culture design and interpret the study alongside the visitors, and catch what does not translate.
Translate and back-translate
An instrument is translated, then independently translated back. Differences from the original reveal where meaning has shifted.
Widen the sample
Samples from WEIRD societies (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic) dominate the research literature.
A finding is replicated in other societies before it is called universal.
Emic groundwork · Local expertise · Back-translation · Broader samples
Even with all four, some bias remains, because the researchers' choice of what is worth studying is itself shaped by culture. The aim is to reduce it and to state it openly.
In a clinic: In diagnosis the equivalent steps are clinicians trained in the client's culture, interpreters, and criteria that describe how distress is typically expressed in different cultures.
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How this is asked: Cultural bias belongs to the concept bias. It can be the focus of a 15-mark essay set in a context, and it is one of the strongest points available in the 15-mark question on a study you are given.
The essay pattern
- State a position on the claim or question.
- Explain the mechanism of the bias.
- Support it with an example, real or hypothetical.
- Show the consequence: for diagnosis, statistics or treatment.
- Give the counter-argument, then a reasoned conclusion.
The trap: one-sided certainty: "Diagnosis is culturally biased, so it cannot be trusted" is a verdict, not a discussion.
Weigh it: when is the bias large, what reduces it, and what would be lost without shared criteria?
One claim in the psychology of health and well-being is that statistics on how common a mental health disorder is tell us as much about clinicians as about patients. Discuss this claim with reference to bias.
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