Psychological studies Essay

Culture diverge is a term which covers several types of curve in psychology. It can be utilise to refer to judgements and prejudices ab tabu certain finales, or systemological influencees which pass off to such biased conclusions. For example, although a method of search may be developed and appoint to be reliable in one culture, the analogous may not be true in an opposite. Culture bias in methodology prevents us from being able to identify subjective behaviour in cross-ethnical research. One type of culture bias is ethnocentrism, which is the tendency to use ones own culture as a basis for judgements about differents. Eurocentrism, ethnocentrism from the perspective of Western cultures, is particularly far-flung in modern Psychology, as it is commonplace for findings based solely on, for example, American participants to be generalised to people across the globe.The relevance of psychological research carried out in Western countries to the wider world is questionnabl e. A large numerate of this issue is a result of methodology. Because mundane veryism and ecological validities shake up so much effect on the generalisation of findings, in range for findings to be relevant across cultures, the methodology must hold these characteristics no matter which culture it is carried out in. Failure to do so may lead to false conclusions, which by definition hinder the main address of Psychology that is, the ability to understand human behaviour.A prominent persona of research that often receives attention for its culture bias is that of Ainsworth & Bell (1970). The unsung situation research method apply in their study of child attachments, and their subsequent conclusions, have received criticism for eurocentrism. The strange situation is employ to observe levels of distress and other behaviours in an infant upon, for example, separation from a pargonnt. This may itself be culture biased because of its individualist nature. If an infant is used to interaction with others, like in Israeli kibbutzim, then separation from a p atomic number 18nt will be much less stressful in the strange situation but this may not imply that the infant is less attached to its parent.The classifications drawn by Ainsworth & Bell are besides heathenly biased, because they explicitly state which type of attachment is desirable (secure) and which types are undesirable (insecure). This, combined with the eurocentrism of the methodology itself, has led to parenting styles and infant attachments in round cultures to be mislabelled as inferior to those of the United States, and yet no profound negative effects related to attachments have been observed in such cultures.Another study frequently criticised for eurocentrism is Milgrams (1963) study into obedience, in which participants were deceived into accept that they were required to administer high-voltage electric shocks to a confederate. In a Smith & Bonds (1998) comparison of replications of the same study in different cultures, it was shown that there were differences between cultures in how many people obeyed the research worker in the experiment. For example, 65% of Americans, compared with 85% of Germans, 40% of Australian males, 16% of Australian females and 62% of Jordanians conformed.This indicates cultural differences, inwardness that the Milgrams conclusions may hold cultural bias but at the same time such cultural differences may not actually exist. It may be that the research method is not suitable for all of the cultures, or that the research method was carried out in different ways in different cultures. The method used was criticised for being unrepresentative of real life in Western cultures, and so it is likely that it is also unrepresentative of real life in other cultures (such as that of Jordan), or even that the differences between the research environment and real life as even more significant in other cultures. We cannot be sure about the members of these cultures until such differences are ruled out. galore(postnominal) theories have also been criticised for their culturally biased nature. Economic exchange theories of human relationship development and maintenance particularly fall under this category, as, according to Moghaddam (1998), they totally apply to Western relationships, and even then only to people in short-term relationships and with high mobility. It may be that relationship theories such as this apply only to individualist cultures and are not suitable for describing relationships in collectivist cultures. However, placing a culture on the individualism-collectivism continuum is not as slow as first thought.In relationship theories, the US if often cited as an individualist culture and Japan as a collectivist culture but when Takano & Osaka (1999) reviewed 15 studies to compare the two nations, only 14 studies back up the distinction. This indicates that even relationship theories which allow for differe nces between individualist and collectivist cultures are biased because they underestimate the role of situational factors and overestimate that of personal characteristics when analysing of behaviour.Another scheme frequently noted for its culture bias is Kohlbergs (1976) theory of deterrent example understanding. This stage theory describes morality from a very Western, democratic perspective. However, these moral philosophy may not be held in other parts of the world, meaning that the theory may lack relevance in the wider world. When Snarey (1985) studied traditionalistic village societies, only the first four stages from Kohlbergs theory were found to be present, with the stage post-conventional reasoning being completely absent. On fact, it was caseful that many moral judgements from some cultures did not fit into any of Kohlbergs stages, suggesting that his theory does not account for other forms of reasoning.