PSYC12H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Cultural Psychology
Document Summary
Acquiescence bias: a tendency to agree with most statements. This is an issue for cross-cultural comparisons because cultures differ in their tendencies to agree with items. This bias makes it very hard to compare an individual"s true degree of approval with that of another person who tends to find most statements to be disagreeable, regardless of content. There is a straightforward solution to the acquiescence bias that is commonly applied when researchers construct trait measures: Typically, half of the items in a measure are designed to be reverse-scored that is, they are written so that agreeing with them indicates an opinion opposite to that measured in the construct. Standardizing the data would also neutralize acquiescence biases. Much work has revealed that east asians tend to have a relatively holistic way of looking at the world, and one consequence is that there are more possible truths in a holistic world.
