Emotional Harm
A test that is culturally biased can severely harm person. Let’s take a look at a few culturally biased sample questions. A culturally biased question could be what month is Christmas celebrated in? The options would be a) January b) June c) July or d) December. For someone who celebrates the holiday this would be a very simple question, but for someone who does not celebrate Christmas this could be a tricky question. For example, many villages and cities in China do not celebrate Christmas (Laturnau, 2009). So this question would be considered cultural biased because someone from China would not know that Christmas is celebrated in December. Another example of a culturally biased question would be Saliva’s tooth just came out so where does she put it? The options would be a) on top of the refrigerator b) under the tree c) under her pillow or d) none of the above. In American culture almost all kids know that a tooth goes under the pillow so the tooth fairy will come collect it and give you money. In Korea, children throw their teeth up on the roof so that the next one will grow in straight, but none of the answers said that (Laturnau, 2009). This question also shows cultural bias because children from Korea would most likely chose none of the above because in their culture they don’t learn about the tooth fairy. The kids answering these questions can be really confused when they find out that they were wrong, but were they really wrong? Considering their culture, they were right, but considering the American culture they were wrong. When these children continue to fail more tests they begin to feel dumb or stupid. When people start to believe this about them self their self-esteem plummets. Low self-esteem can really mess with a person’s mind and lead to detrimental problems like depression or even suicide (Anshel, 2012). Sometimes people are grouped together to create a stereotype. Stereotype threat is defined as anxiety regarding one’s performance in a particular domain based on negative stereotypes that exist in reference to one’s group (Anshel, 2012). This anxiety is not related to the individual’s ability but rather to the situation in which a negative stereotype may be confirmed by one’s performance. Evidence for stereotype threat’s effects is now abundant. Numerous studies show that it can depress the standardized test performances on a variety of groups for whom stereotypes allege inferior abilities in some area (Anshel, 2012). Stereotyping like judging a book by its cover, and it can also really hurts someone’s feelings. People are like pieces of paper, once they have been stomped on, crumbled up, and torn up the pieces of paper will always have wrinkles, so will the people. Those wrinkles can hunt those people for the rest of their lives. |