Cultural bias

Cultural bias, or ethnocentricity, occurs when an individual interprets other people’s experiences through the lens of their own cultural experience. When judgment of others is based on the standards of one’s own culture, the implication that one culture is better than another arises. This preferential treatment, or bias, may be intentional or unintentional. In either case, cultural bias is considered a discriminatory practice because it assumes that one society’s behavior is the accepted norm, thereby placing other groups at lesser value.

Overview

The word “culture” can refer to many aspects of a society; therefore, cultural bias can exist in many areas of life. This bias points out differences among cultural groups ranging from social values, rules of conduct, taboos, and beliefs, to language, ethnicity, race, socioeconomic status, and more. For example, readers of English scan a page from left to right and top to bottom, and pages are turned from left to right; the act of reading in this way feels so natural to English speakers that it is often assumed other cultures do the same. However, readers of Japanese scan a page left to right or top to bottom, and pages are turned from right to left. Hebrew is read horizontally from right to left, and pages are turned from the right. Other languages are read in different ways as well. The tendency for people to believe that all humankind is the same may mean no greater or lesser value placed on different cultural groups. However, this assumption of “sameness” is often based on the belief that one’s inherent values are the same for everyone else.

Cultural bias is a common problem in the social and human sciences, including psychology, sociology, anthropology, and economics. These sciences seek to understand human society, and thus it becomes difficult not to exhibit cultural bias when drawing conclusions. When making assumptions about cultural norms or even differences among cultural norms, scholars may be accused of bias for formulating absolutes about people from outside their own cultures. The other issue with cultural bias in the social sciences is that since these fields are considered science, conclusions drawn by the scholar will likely be considered fact. These absolutes then become a mask for hiding prejudice, intentional or otherwise.

One form of cultural bias that often appears among social scientists of the Western world is Eurocentrism, the application of European ideas and theories to other cultures when trying to create a universal view of human behavior. An unintentionally Eurocentric psychologist, for example, may conduct a study in which only people of European background are sampled or in which questions are only relevant to Western cultures even though the sample is mixed. The psychologist could also sample an unfamiliar cultural group that may not understand why certain tasks or questions are being asked of them; for example, an English speaker would write an X in a box to indicate agreement, whereas a Japanese speaker would write an X to indicate refusal.

Another area in which cultural bias can be a problem is education. Textbooks that discuss different cultures may be Eurocentric, for example. Standardized testing is another controversial issue in education. Cultural bias is likely to be inherent in anything “standard,” or established as the model for everyone to follow. Culturally biased standardized tests are invalid as accurate measures of aptitude because they reflect the cultural biases of the test designers and do not account for cultural differences among test takers. In the United States, standardized college entry tests such as the SAT and ACT have been repeatedly accused of cultural bias, as test results often show large achievement gaps between different racial and ethnic groups.

In the 2010s, more than 1,200 US colleges and universities either dropped the use of standardized test scores from admissions requirements or made them optional. In 2019 students, advocacy groups, and educators sued the University of California system for continuing to require applicants to submit SAT and ACT scores for admission and scholarships despite research showing that the tests were culturally biased and discriminated against Black and Hispanic students, those with lower family incomes, and those with disabilities. The plaintiffs in Smith v. Regents of the University of California argued that requiring test scores for admission violated California's anti-discrimination laws. Defenders of the standardized tests argued that the tests were not inherently biased but instead revealed longstanding inequities in the US educational system. The University of California made test scores optional in 2020 and then settled the case in 2021 by agreeing to stop requiring SAT and ACT scores for admission and scholarship decisions between fall 2021 and sprint 2025.

Bibliography

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