Ethnocentrism in psychology refers to the tendency to view one’s own cultural or ethnic group as superior and to judge other groups based on the values and standards of one’s group. It is the belief that one’s own culture is correct and superior compared to other cultures.
In essence, ethnocentrism leads individuals to use their own ethnic group and its standards to interpret and evaluate other groups, often in a negative manner.
Those who are ethnocentric assume their cultural norms are the ideal that other cultures should be measured against or aspire to.
For example, someone who is ethnocentric might believe their traditional cuisine or clothing is the proper way, and that other cultural practices are inferior or strange in comparison.
Or they may think their language should be the default spoken, rather than needing to accommodate other languages.
Key Takeaways
- Definition: Ethnocentrism means judging other cultures by the standards of your own, treating your group’s norms as the natural, correct baseline.
- In-group/Out-group: People favour their own group and view outsiders less favourably, a bias rooted in basic social categorisation rather than deliberate prejudice.
- In Research: Classic studies, from the Strange Situation to the US Army’s WWI intelligence tests, treated one culture’s results as universal and drew biased conclusions about others.
- Consequences: Ethnocentrism can distort diagnosis, misinform policy, and fuel prejudice when one culture’s standard is mistaken for a human default.
- The Fix: Cultural relativism and an emic approach, studying a culture on its own terms, help researchers avoid imposing one culture’s standard on another.
Ethnocentrism occurs when one believes that their own cultural group is superior to others.
Explanation
Individuals who are ethnocentric will believe that their culture’s beliefs, ideas, values, and practices are correct, and they use the standards in their own culture to assess other cultural groups.
They will tend to have negative attitudes toward other cultures and believe their beliefs, ideas, values, and practices are wrong or strange.
A popular example of ethnocentrism is to think of the utensils different cultures prefer to use. Some cultures prefer to use forks, spoons, and knives to eat and may believe that it is weird or incorrect that some cultures traditionally use chopsticks to eat.
Ethnocentrism can occur for anyone across most cultures and societies and is not limited to one culture.
It is thought to occur largely because people understand their own culture best. This leads them to assume their own culture’s norms are universal.
Social Identity Theory explains why this happens so easily. Sorting people into an in-group and an out-group is a basic feature of social cognition, not a specifically cultural failing.
Research using the minimal group paradigm shows that people favour their own group and downgrade an out-group even when group membership is trivial and randomly assigned. No real conflict of interest is needed.
So, if they notice anything that deviates from their cultural norms, this can lead to ethnocentric attitudes.
Some researchers believe that ethnocentrism comprises in-group favoritism and vilification of out-groups; thus, people have a high opinion of their own group and think negatively about out-groups.
How does ethnocentrism relate to psychology?
The predominant view in psychology has been white males, mainly from the USA. That view is not universal.
This means psychologists have often ignored views, values, language, or culture from elsewhere. For example, views about the signs and symptoms of mental disorders in the DSM are based on white male experiences, so other experiences are ignored.
Views about appropriate patterns of child rearing follow white, English-speaking norms too. Other approaches are simply devalued.
In psychology, ethnocentrism can exist when researchers design studies or draw conclusions that can only be applied to one cultural group. It occurs when a researcher assumes that their own culturally specific practices or ideas are ‘natural’ or ‘right.’
Teo and Febbraro (2003) identify four ways this bias enters psychological research.
- Scientific racism: research designed to prove that non-western or non-white groups are inferior, using the language of science.
- Researcher prejudice: assumptions a researcher makes before collecting data, about which populations count as ‘normal’ and which comparisons are worth making.
- Exclusion of non-western views: non-western findings are ignored, or squeezed into existing western categories without asking whether those categories fit.
- Institutional bias: hiring, publishing, and teaching practices that keep reproducing the same narrow group of researchers and reference works.
The individual uses their own ethnic group to evaluate and judge other individuals from other ethnic groups; research ‘centered’ around one cultural group is called ‘ethnocentric.’
When other cultures are observed to differ from the researcher’s own, they may be regarded negatively, e.g., ‘primitive,’ ‘degenerate,’ ‘unsophisticated,’ or ‘undeveloped.’ This becomes racism when other cultures are denigrated, or their traditions dismissed as irrelevant.
Ethnocentrism in psychology can reduce the generalisability of findings. Researchers who ignore cultural diversity risk treating one group’s results as universal truths.
What are the disadvantages of ethnocentrism?
Not all cultural pride is a problem.
But ethnocentrism goes further: it is the belief that your own culture is superior, and that belief carries real downfalls.
It can make people more close-minded about how others live, reinforcing an in-group/out-group mentality and spreading misinformation about other cultures.
The effects can be serious.
If a group believes other groups are inferior, this can lead to discrimination, prejudice, or even racism.
Upholding one’s own culture too strongly can also hinder societal progress and prevent cooperation between cultures.
The stakes are not just social.
Cultural groups may be less likely to help each other in times of need, instead preserving only the people in their own group whom they consider more important.
This risk is especially high in research: when study materials are built around one culture, the results can reinforce existing discrimination and deny other cultures equal opportunities.
A Historical Example: Army Intelligence Testing
A well-known example is the intelligence testing the US Army carried out during the First World War.
Psychologist Robert Yerkes led the testing programme, known as the Army Alpha and Army Beta tests, which screened roughly 1.75 million recruits for military roles (Yerkes, 1921).
The tests assumed familiarity with American brands and customs.
Recent European immigrants scored lower than American-born white recruits as a result, and Black recruits scored lower still.
Commentators at the time treated these gaps as evidence of real, inborn intelligence differences between races, rather than as a sign the test measured cultural exposure.
The scores said more about test content than intelligence.
Gould (1981) shows this conclusion was later used to support the restrictive 1924 US Immigration Act.
An unexamined ethnocentric assumption, in other words, became lasting government policy.
Ethnocentrism examples
Ethnocentrism in samples
Some of the most famous psychological studies (such as Milgram’s, Asch’s, and Zimbardo’s) used only white American males in their samples.
Conclusions were drawn from the results that they would be the same across all cultures. Berry (1967) tested this directly by replicating Asch’s conformity paradigm in societies with different subsistence economies.
Conformity was not fixed. It tracked how much a society depended on cooperative food production, rather than holding as a universal trait.
As these studies were conducted a long time ago, you might expect psychological research to be more culturally diverse now. However, psychology still has a long way to go to be truly representative of all cultures.
There is still a strong Western bias. One analysis found that 90% of research participants are drawn from Western countries, and 60% of those are American (Thalmayer et al., 2021).
They go on to say that only about 11% of the world’s population is represented in the top psychology journals. That means 89% of the population is neglected.
The Strange Situation
Ainsworth’s classic study of The Strange Situation (1970) is an example of ethnocentric research. This study was developed to assess the attachment types of infants – the sample in this study used all American infants.
Many researchers made an assumption.
It was that this study meant the same thing for infants everywhere, not just for American children. Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988) tested that assumption, pooling Strange Situation results from eight countries.
Secure attachment was the most common classification everywhere. But the pattern of insecure attachment varied systematically by culture.
Most noteworthy are the differences observed in Japanese and German infants compared to American infants.
While the American ideal standard for attachment is ‘secure attachment,’ many Japanese infants displayed behaviors closer to ‘insecure-resistant attachment.’ Many German infants, meanwhile, displayed behaviors closer to ‘insecure-avoidant attachment.’
The different results from other cultures were presented as ‘abnormal’ and in need of explanation. But the more defensible reading is simpler: cultural differences in how children are raised.
It does not mean that German mothers are more insensitive, or that Japanese mothers are too clingy. Their infants simply react differently to the same situation.
The methods used in The Strange Situation are examples of imposed etic, meaning to study a culture from the outside and make inferences in relation to one culture’s standard.
More valid results could be obtained through the use of an emic study, meaning studying culture from the inside.
Ethnocentrism and Cultural Bias
Cultural bias in psychology is when research is conducted in one culture, and the findings are generalized to other cultures or are accepted as universally applicable.
Ainsworth’s research is culturally biased since standards were set for ‘secure attachment’ based on an American-only sample.
This standard was then generalized to other cultures. Children elsewhere were expected to behave the way securely attached American children behaved, or risk being classed as insecurely attached.
Parenting styles and infant behavior outside America were seen as abnormal simply because they didn’t fit American norms. That is what ties cultural bias to ethnocentrism.
Another example of cultural bias relates to the design of standardized tests, such as intelligence tests. Western-designed tests reflect what the West considers intelligent.
However, Western cultures may have a different idea of what qualifies as intelligence compared to other cultures.
Thus, when Western-designed intelligence tests are used in non-western countries, the results are likely to be biased. The test measures something from the benchmark of a different cultural experience.
This can lead to ethnocentrism.
If people outside the West score lower on these tests, the West may wrongly conclude that non-Western countries are less intelligent.
There are two types of cultural bias that can relate to psychological research:
-
Alpha bias – this occurs when a theory assumes that cultural groups are profoundly different. Since their differences are exaggerated, the cultural norms and values of the researchers are considered superior to other cultures.
-
Beta bias – this occurs when real cultural differences are ignored or minimized. All people are assumed to be the same, resulting in research that is universally applied to all cultures.
Ethnocentrism’s Cost in Mental Health Diagnosis
A mental health practitioner is highly unlikely to go through a career without meeting clients who differ from them in religion, ethnicity, or culture (Farooq & Abbas, 2013).
Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) service users can find the care on offer poorly matched to their own cultural values.
The system was not built with them in mind.
Eurocentric assumptions about distress and its treatment shaped the surrounding system of care (Nadirshaw, 2009).
A systematic review and meta-analysis puts a number on this problem.
Aim: Halvorsrud, Nazroo, Otis, Brown Hajdukova, and Bhui (2019) set out to establish how far diagnosed severe mental illness in England differs by ethnicity.
The scale of the gap is striking.
Method: The researchers searched nine databases for prior reviews, plus three databases for studies published between 2010 and 2018.
They then pooled 28 eligible primary studies into new meta-analyses of diagnosis risk by ethnic group.
The results were stark.
Results: The risk of a schizophrenia diagnosis was more than five times higher in Black African and Black Caribbean groups than in the majority white British population.
It was more than double in South Asian, White Other, and Mixed Ethnicity groups, with a similar, smaller pattern for affective psychosis.
The pattern held across categories.
Conclusion: Elevated diagnosis rates are not confined to Black groups or to schizophrenia specifically.
They extend across ethnic minority groups and diagnostic categories, pointing to broader structural disadvantages.
This evidence is strong precisely because it synthesises many primary studies rather than relying on one sample.
But it cannot, on its own, separate several possible causes.
A genuinely higher incidence driven by the stress of racism and disadvantage, biased pathways into care, and diagnostic categories built and normed on white British populations could all contribute.
This ambiguity does not weaken the finding.
It shows why ethnocentric bias in applied practice is rarely a single, cleanly isolable variable.
There is also a direct ethical cost.
Because psychology is based on the scientist-practitioner model, evidence-based interventions should be developed for diverse populations through culturally-informed research.
Excluding BME patients from research is unethical and introduces bias, since the results are no longer representative of the population (Farooq & Abbas, 2013).
What is Cross-Cultural Psychology?
Cross-cultural psychology is a branch of psychology that examines how cultural factors influence human behavior.
The goal is to look at both universal and unique behaviors to establish the ways in which culture has an influence on behavior, relationships, education, etc.
After focusing on North American and European research for many years, Western researchers began to question something important. Did the observations and ideas long considered universal actually apply to cultures outside the samples that were studied? Increasingly, the answer was that they did not.
Many cross-cultural psychologists have found that many observations about human thought and behavior may only be generalizable to specific groups.
An emic approach, which looks within cultures to identify behaviors specific to that culture, is usually best for cross-cultural study.
Researchers using this approach immerse themselves fully in a culture. They come to understand its practices and values deeply.
From this, they can develop research procedures suited to that culture and interpret findings accordingly. These procedures are not simply exported to other cultures, where they might yield invalid results.
What topics can be studied in cross-cultural psychology?
Cross-cultural psychology can explore many topics, such as:
-
Child development – whether unique cultural practices influence development.
-
Emotions – do all people experience emotions the same way? Is emotional expression universal?
-
Language – whether the acquisition of language and its development is similar or different between cultures?
-
Relationships – the differences in family, romantic relationships, and friendships that are influenced by culture.
-
Personality – the degree to which aspects of personality might be influenced by or linked with cultural influences.
-
Social behavior – understanding how cultural norms and expectations have an effect on social behavior.
What are the benefits of cross-cultural psychology?
By understanding what could have been cultural bias, researchers have increased their understanding of culture and culture-specific behaviors.
This has helped with diagnosing mental illness.
In the past, some culture-specific behaviors were misdiagnosed as symptoms of a disorder. Recent editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) now list culture-specific behaviors to help clinicians diagnose more accurately.
Modern researchers travel far more than in the past.
They can meet people from across the globe and attend talks and conferences with researchers from other cultures. These exchanges can help grow understanding and reduce cultural bias.
Researchers can also ask people from different cultures to flag methodology flaws that might otherwise introduce cultural bias.
Psychology’s First, Second, and Third Worlds
Who Produces Psychological Knowledge?
Moghaddam and Studer (1997) describe the global production of psychological knowledge as split across three unequal groups of countries.
| “World” | Countries | Role |
|---|---|---|
| First World | USA | Holds a near-monopoly on producing psychological knowledge and exports it worldwide through leading books, journals, test publishers, and training institutions. |
| Second World | Western Europe and Russia | Has far less influence on world psychology, despite being where the discipline’s philosophical roots lie, and is overwhelmed by US-manufactured knowledge. |
| Third World | Most other nations, e.g., Pakistan and India | Mostly imports knowledge, first from the USA and also from Second World countries with which they had colonial ties. India is the most significant Third World “producer,” though even its research mostly follows US and Western European lines. |
This is a description of unequal production, not just unequal content. Third World psychologists have historically had far less power to set research agendas, train the next generation of researchers, or publish in the journals that confer academic prestige.
Indigenous Psychology as a Corrective
This imbalance points toward indigenous psychology as a natural corrective.
Rather than importing a First World psychology and adapting it, indigenous psychology builds theory, method, and research questions from within a culture’s own concepts.
This shift is significant because it redistributes the authority to decide what counts as a worthwhile psychological question.
The questions change, not just the answers.
Sinha (1997) frames this not as a rejection of scientific rigor.
It is instead a corrective to a discipline that has remained both “culture-bound” (built from one culture’s assumptions) and “culture-blind” (unaware that it has done so).
A related movement pushes further still.
Afrocentricity applies the same logic outside psychology, reconstructing scholarship about people of African descent around African rather than European historical and conceptual frameworks.
Ethnocentrism vs. cultural relativism
| Ethnocentrism | Cultural Relativism |
|---|---|
| The belief that one’s own cultural or ethnic group is superior to others. | The principle that all cultures should be understood and evaluated on their own terms, rather than judged by the standards of another culture. |
| Views other cultures as inferior or less important. | Respects and appreciates the diversity of other cultures. |
| Uses the standards and values of one’s own culture to judge others. | Recognizes that each culture has its own unique standards and values that should be understood and respected. |
| Unwilling to learn about other cultures because they are perceived as inferior. | Open to learning about and understanding other cultures. |
| Can lead to prejudice, discrimination, and conflict between different cultural groups. | Promotes understanding and appreciation of different cultures, and can reduce conflict between them. |
Ethnocentrism and cultural relativism are two ways to assess an unfamiliar culture.
Ethnocentrism judges other cultures by the standards of your own. Cultural relativism instead holds that a culture should be understood on its own terms, without being judged against another culture’s criteria.
The two produce very different verdicts on the same behavior. Someone who is ethnocentric may believe their own culture is ‘correct’ and ‘normal,’ but someone who adopts cultural relativism understands that no one culture is better than another.
An example of ethnocentrism is believing that the traditional clothing of a culture other than your own is ‘strange’ or ‘incorrect.’
Cultural relativism reads the same example differently. It appreciates that different cultures simply have their own clothing, and would not judge someone’s clothing negatively just because it differs from the observer’s own norm.
In research, cultural relativism is the ideology that what may be observable in research may only make sense from the perspective of the observed culture and cannot be applied to different cultures.
Ethnocentrism can be reduced by studying a culture using an emic approach. This means observing cultural differences in context, using that culture’s own concepts and standards.
Ethnocentric studies are not automatically invalid. Researchers should simply be clear that their findings may apply only to the culture they studied, and that generalizing further is questionable.
Cultural Relativism in Psychology
Sternberg (1985) offers a good example of cultural relativism at work in research: the meaning of intelligence differs by culture.
In some cultures, coordination and motor skills are essential to daily life. Someone who excels at these skills is considered highly intelligent there.
Other cultures value something different. There, motor skills matter less, and vast general knowledge counts as intelligence instead.
This is the logic behind ‘indigenous psychologies’: research that draws explicitly on the unique experience of people in a particular cultural context.
Afrocentrism is one example. It holds that theories about people of African heritage must recognize the African context of their behaviors and attitudes.
This matters because it produces theories relevant to African lives and cultures. It also helps people far removed from African origins, since it models how any culture-specific theory should be built.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are some examples of ethnocentric behavior?
In psychology, ethnocentric behavior can occur when a researcher conducts a study in a particular culture and then states in their findings that their results can be generalized to all cultures.
Likewise, when researchers apply their theory to another culture, and the results differ from what was the norm in their culture, they state that there is something wrong with that culture.
Otherwise, some other examples of ethnocentric behavior include:
– Judging other cultures’ food and specialty dishes.
– Judging people’s cultural outfits.
– Expecting others to speak your language and criticizing them if they can’t.
– Historical colonialism.
– Judging someone who chooses to live on their own when it is traditional to always live with family in your culture.
What is ethnorelativism?
Ethnorelativism is the ability to see values and behaviors as cultural rather than universal.
It is a belief based on respect for other cultures, believing that all groups, cultures, or subcultures are inherently equal.
Furthermore, it is the belief that other cultures are no better or worse than one’s own but are equally valid despite their differences.
What is the difference between ethnocentrism and racism?
As ethnocentrism implicates a strong identification with an in-group, it can lead to ingrained negative feelings and stereotyping of out-group members, which can be confused with racism.
Whilst they are not the same, ethnocentrism can lead to prejudiced behaviors and attempts to impose one’s subjective culture onto other cultural groups.
Ethnocentric attitudes can lead to prejudice and discrimination based on race and the belief that one race is superior to all others.
What is the difference between ethnocentrism and xenocentrism?
While ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s own culture is superior and correct compared to others, xenocentrism is the belief that other cultures are better than one’s own culture.
Essentially, xenocentrism is the opposite of ethnocentrism. In some ways, xenocentrism is considered deviant behavior as it goes against the norms of what someone is expected to appreciate.
Examples of this can include:
– The belief is that vehicles manufactured in other countries are better than ones made in your own country.
– European Renaissance artists desired to emulate ancient Greek artwork.
– The belief that cheeses and wines from other countries are superior to the products from your own country.
– The belief that the style of clothing in another culture is superior to those within your own culture.
– The idea that quality products cannot be purchased in one’s own country.
Further Information
- Teo, Thomas, and Angela R. Febbraro. “Ethnocentrism as a form of intuition in psychology.” Theory & Psychology 13.5 (2003): 673-694.
- Christopher, J. C., & Hickinbottom, S. (2008). Positive psychology, ethnocentrism, and the disguised ideology of individualism. Theory & psychology, 18(5), 563-589.
References
Berry, J. W. (1967). Independence and conformity in subsistence-level societies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 7(4, Pt. 1), 415–418. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0025231
Farooq, R., & Abbas, I. (2013). No voice, no choice. The Psychologist, 26(9), 660–663.
Gould, S. J. (1981). The mismeasure of man. W. W. Norton.
Halvorsrud, K., Nazroo, J., Otis, M., Brown Hajdukova, E., & Bhui, K. (2019). Ethnic inequalities in the incidence of diagnosis of severe mental illness in England: A systematic review and new meta-analyses for non-affective and affective psychoses. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 54(11), 1311–1323. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-019-01758-y
Hasa. (2020, February 17). What is the Difference Between Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism. PEDIAA. https://pediaa.com/what-is-the-difference-between-ethnocentrism-and-cultural-relativism/#:~:text=and%20Cultural%20Relativism-,Definition,using%20standards%20of%20another%20culture
Moghaddam, F. M., & Studer, C. (1997). Cross-cultural psychology: The frustrated gadfly’s promises, potentialities, and failures. In D. Fox & I. Prilleltensky (Eds.), Critical psychology: An introduction (pp. 185–201). Sage.
Nadirshaw, Z. (2009). Race, culture and ethnicity in mental health care. In R. Bhui & D. Bhugra (Eds.), Culture and mental health: A comprehensive textbook (pp. 38–45). Hodder Arnold.
Rosado, C. (1994). Understanding cultural relativism in a multicultural world. The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 15-29.
Sternberg, R. J. (1985). Implicit theories of intelligence, creativity, and wisdom. Journal of personality and social psychology, 49(3), 607.
Thalmayer, A. G., Toscanelli, C., & Arnett, J. J. (2021). The neglected 95% revisited: Is American psychology becoming less American? American Psychologist, 76(1), 116–129.
Tilley, J. J. (2000). Cultural relativism. Hum. Rts. Q., 22, 501.
van Ijzendoorn, M. H., & Kroonenberg, P. M. (1988). Cross-cultural patterns of attachment: A meta-analysis of the Strange Situation. Child Development, 59(1), 147–156. https://doi.org/10.2307/1130396
Yerkes, R. M. (Ed.). (1921). Psychological examining in the United States Army. Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, 15, 1–890.
