Culture and the Home-Field Disadvantage

• Published in: Perspectives on Psychological Science Vol. 5; no. 6; pp. 708 - 713
• Main Authors: Medin, Douglas, Bennis, Will, Chandler, Michael
• Format: Journal Article Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA Sage Publications 01.11.2010; SAGE Publications; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Avoidable; Bias; Cognitive psychology; Cross cultural studies; Cultural groups; Cultural studies; Culture; Disability; Hardwood trees; Interventions; Mental stimulation; Psychological regression; Psychological research; Research design; Researchers; Suicide rates; psychological distance; research bias; cross-cultural psychology
• ISSN: 1745-6916; 1745-6924
• DOI: 10.1177/1745691610388772

The home-field disadvantage refers to the disadvantage inherent in research that takes a particular cultural group as the starting point or standard for research, including cross-cultural research. We argue that home-field status is a serious handicap that often pushes researchers toward deficit thinking, however good the researchers' intentions may be. In this article, we aim to make this home-field bias more explicit and, in doing so, more avoidable. We discuss three often-overlooked disadvantages that result from this home-field status: the problem of marked versus unmarked culture, the problem of homogenous versus heterogeneous culture, and the problem of regression toward the mean. We also recommend four interventions researchers can apply to avoid the home-field disadvantage or, at the least, attenuate its deleterious effects.