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Can you describe your cultural bias using examples?

Asked by wundayatta (58722points) April 14th, 2009

Under some research methods theories employed by sociologists and anthropologists amongst others, it is impossible to gather data from any unbiased point of view. It is impossible to gather data without affecting the data.

We all see the world through various cultural lenses. We are thus biased in one way or another in comparison to people from different cultures or subcultures, or, probably, each individual. The trick, then, is to be able to describe your way of seeing the world, so that everyone else can then correct for what they believe is your bias.

As rough examples, a wealthy person might see the world from a point of privilege, and have no idea that it might be hard to find a bite to eat. This brings about prejudices that affect the way the wealthy person interprets data.

A woman might see things differently. A lesbian in another way. Add race, language, etc, etc, and I hope you see what I mean. I hope you also see that this language of dividing things by income, race, gender, etc, is a bias. Perhaps it can be called a scientific bias, but you can call it whatever you want.

It’s a trick to aware of your biases. I don’t know if it can be done. I tried to show one of mine above. How would you describe your biases? What kinds of lenses do you see the world with? This is a vast topic, and I don’t expect you to name everything, but I hope we’ll get some interesting things.

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