Culture refers to ethnicity, socio-economic status, nationality and geographic culture. Culture bias occurs when people of one culture make assumptions about the behaviour of people from other cultures, based on their own cultural norms and practice. Therefore, it can be said that traditional psychology is characterised by theoretical and research based on the culture of psychology in Europe and the USA. Much of the research has been conducted on white American and Europeans these results have then been generalised to people all over the world, cross culturally. Psychology has traditionally been pre-dominantly a white, euro-american enterprise. Smith and Bond (1998) found that in one British textbook, 66% of the studies were American, 32%
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Piaget's research into the preoperational stage is ethnocentric and it uses cultural references, Piaget and Inhelder (1956) used the 3 mountains test and asked children to choose the picture that the doll (placed the other side of the mountain) would see from 'her' perceptive. However, Hughes (1975) argued that Piaget's argued that the three mountain task did not make sense to the children as it lack ecological validity, some children had never seen a mountain. The ethnocentric results were generalised to all children going through the preoperational stage. Eurocentrism is a form of ethnocentrism which emphasises Western European and/or Amercian values. Nobles (1976) points out that the 'Eurocentric' approach, based on ceoncepts such as survival of the fittest, comeptition and independence is very often applied to the study of African peoples, who believe in the survival of the group, cooperation and interdependence and therefore amounts to an act of scientific colonialism.
The emic approach emphasises the uniqueness of every culutre by focusing on the culturally specific phenomena/behaviour. Any cross-cultural studies that ignore such phenomena are seen as invalid. Emic approaches usually involve indigenous researchers studying their own cultural group, this means the study of that culture comes from within that culture. Finding can therefore only be generalised only to indiviudals from that
Piaget's research into the preoperational stage is ethnocentric and it uses cultural references, Piaget and Inhelder (1956) used the 3 mountains test and asked children to choose the picture that the doll (placed the other side of the mountain) would see from 'her' perceptive. However, Hughes (1975) argued that Piaget's argued that the three mountain task did not make sense to the children as it lack ecological validity, some children had never seen a mountain. The ethnocentric results were generalised to all children going through the preoperational stage. Eurocentrism is a form of ethnocentrism which emphasises Western European and/or Amercian values. Nobles (1976) points out that the 'Eurocentric' approach, based on ceoncepts such as survival of the fittest, comeptition and independence is very often applied to the study of African peoples, who believe in the survival of the group, cooperation and interdependence and therefore amounts to an act of scientific colonialism.
The emic approach emphasises the uniqueness of every culutre by focusing on the culturally specific phenomena/behaviour. Any cross-cultural studies that ignore such phenomena are seen as invalid. Emic approaches usually involve indigenous researchers studying their own cultural group, this means the study of that culture comes from within that culture. Finding can therefore only be generalised only to indiviudals from that