Ethnocentrism DefinitionEthnocentrism is the tendency to view the world through the lens of one’s own culture. That is, individuals tend to judge others’ behaviors, customs, beliefs, and attitudes by their own cultural standards. The phenomenon of ethnocentrism is believed to occur largely because individuals have the greatest awareness and information about their own culture, which erroneously leads them to believe that the norms, standards, and values within their own culture are universally adopted. Ethnocentrism is a general phenomenon that occurs for individuals across most cultures and societies, although the extent to which it occurs may vary. Show
Ethnocentrism Background and Research Since Sumner’s original definition, early psychological researchers continued to define ethnocentrism similarly. In the 1950s, for instance, T. W. Adorno and his colleagues devised an ethnocentrism subscale that was a component of the larger authoritarianism construct. These researchers believed that ethnocentrism comprises both ingroup favoritism and a denigration of outgroups. Evidence for Sumner’s conception of ethnocentrism comes from research that demonstrated an inverse relation between ingroup attitudes and out-group attitudes. This research supported the idea that individuals that have a high opinion of one’s own group also correspond to negativity toward outgroups. In addition, such research showed the generalizability of negative opinions toward outgroups; that is, individuals who have negative attitudes toward one group also tend to have negative attitudes toward other groups. Thus, this early perspective equated ethnocentrism with ethnic prejudice, racism, or both. More recently, researchers have tended to define ethnocentrism more broadly; for instance, they propose that individuals use their own cultures to judge other outgroups, but they do not necessarily have to have negative evaluations of these outgroups. For example, Marilyn Brewer and her colleagues found that individuals can hold simultaneously positive attitudes toward their own group and outgroups even when they differ on some value, attitude, or behavior. This finding has been confirmed in multiple cultural groups including those in Africa, New Guinea, North America, and Asia. Additional research on ethnocentrism has revealed that correlations between ingroup and outgroup attitudes are not always negative; rather, they vary widely. Lastly, research demonstrates that under conditions of inter-group competition, conflict, or threat, individuals may be more likely to have increased ingroup identification and outgroup hostility. As a whole, then, ethnocentrism is not necessarily equated with ethnic prejudice and racism; instead, it is the tendency to use one’s group or culture as a reference in judging other groups, with this judgment resulting in negative, indifferent, or positive evaluation. Reference:
EthnocentrismElizabeth BaylorLAST REVIEWED: 19 November 2019LAST MODIFIED: 11 January 2012DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0045 (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});IntroductionEthnocentrism is a term applied to the cultural or ethnic bias—whether conscious or unconscious—in which an individual views the world from the perspective of his or her own group, establishing the in-group as archetypal and rating all other groups with reference to this ideal. This form of tunnel vision often results in: (1) an inability to adequately understand cultures that are different from one’s own and (2) value judgments that preference the in-group and assert its inherent superiority, thus linking the concept of ethnocentrism to multiple forms of chauvinism and prejudice, including nationalism, tribalism, racism, and even sexism and disability discrimination. Ethnocentrism is a concept that was coined within anthropology and formed the cornerstone of its early evolutionary theory before becoming one of the discipline’s primary social critiques. It continues to both challenge and inspire anthropologists, shifting in meaning and application with theoretical trends and across the subdisciplines. For many anthropologists in the Boasian tradition, ethnocentrism is the antithesis of anthropology, a mind-set that it actively counters through cultural relativism, education, and applied activities such as cultural brokering. Physical anthropologists have tended to define the concept more generally as preferential cooperation with a defined in-group and to interrogate its potential evolutionary origins, while the postmodern trend has been a growing suspicion of the anthropologist’s own ability to transcend cultural bias in his or her analysis and presentation of the “other,” leading to an emphasis on reflexivity and subjective diversity. Outside of the discipline, ethnocentrism is a topic of study for biologists, political scientists, communication experts, psychologists, and sociologists, particularly in the areas of politics, identity, and conflict. Marketing has seized on the term to describe consumers who prefer domestically produced goods, and the derivative ethnocentric has become a common criticism in the era of globalization for those assuming their own cultural superiority. General Overviews and Foundational TextsIt is difficult to identify a definitive text for the concept of ethnocentrism, given its shifting meanings and common usage as an implicit critique. Sumner 1906 provides the original formulation of the term, defining it as a “view of things in which one’s own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it.” While Sumner is commonly credited with coining the term, ethnocentric was previously used in McGee 1900 to characterize what he termed the primitive mind-set. Levine and Campbell 1972 provides one of the most comprehensive and research-friendly definitions, drawing on the literature from anthropology, sociology, psychology, political science, and economics to create a set of twenty-three testable characteristics. Yet while Levine and Campbell 1972 combines in-group and out-group directed characteristics, many theorists have argued for a decoupling of these concepts, further problematizing the issue of defining ethnocentrism (see Definitions). See Murdock 1949 for a classic formulation of ethnocentrism as a universal form of in-group consciousness and Herskovits 1948 for a standard reading of the term as a human cultural feature with an implied value judgment.
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Down Which term refers to the tendency to view others through one's own cultural perspective?Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one's own culture. Part of ethnocentrism is the belief that one's own race, ethnic or cultural group is the most important or that some or all aspects of its culture are superior to those of other groups.
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Which term refers to the tendency to view others through ones own cultural perspective?
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