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      Figure 1.3 Measurement and Equivalence

      The White Standard

      Within the United States, White Americans have been the main voice in the field of psychology until more recent decades, though even as late as 2013, only one fifth of those working in the field of psychology were non-White (APA, 2015). In addition, people of some races were kept out of educational experiences (some by segregation and other laws, and others by lack of resources). This means that throughout the history of psychology, many more theories and ideas have been put forward by White Americans and thus come from a Western, European American cultural framework. This is often called the White Standard, and we can see this in theory and in other tenets. This term comes from work done in the field of physiology and medical science, in which the physical characteristics of White individuals were used “as the standard of measurement and [scientists] judged all other race varieties as they approximated or diverged from it” (Blakeslee, 1915/2017, p. 301). As happened with the work of Goddard and Bean described earlier, reliance on White individuals as “the norm” gave many differences significance that did not actually exist. The White Standard affects the types of variables that are studied, the way they are measured, and the understanding of their functionality in daily life. For this reason, many theories and ideas put forward in the early part of the field of psychology may not be accurate depictions of psychological health for non-White individuals and groups. Thomas and Sillen (1972) called use of Whites as the standard for health scientific racism and listed many examples of how bias was directed at African Americans and other racial and ethnic minority groups in the form of psychological research. When we, as current or future researchers, do not attend to our own biases or the bias of our field in its origins, we run the risk of developing faulty conclusions to research. At best this can lead to mistakes, but at worst, as has been shown, this type of faulty research can portray entire populations as damaged or abnormal.

      Impact in Everyday Life

      We may also experience this lack of attention to cultural context in everyday life, when someone assumes that behaviors that align with various non-Western cultural norms are “wrong” when they differ from those that the majority culture believes is the “right way” of behaving. Leadership is one area in which the White Standard is often applied (Rosette, Leonardelli, & Phillips, 2008). Consider the following vignette:

      I am very good at my job and I know that my efforts were a huge part of our team succeeding in our last project. My boss knows this too. At our last large group meeting he gave me some praise and said that I was “solely” responsible for the success. I deferred a little in the meeting because I wanted to give my team credit too and talked about this as a joint effort. I’m Chinese American and was taught from a young age to share the credit whenever I can. It seems like the right thing to do to as a leader. Later my boss called me into his office and said he’d like to offer me some advice. He said, “If you want to keep moving up in this business you have to take credit when it’s offered to you and not give it away. That’s not the style of a good leader. I’d like to promote you eventually, but you’ll need to work on that weakness.” I felt confused because I know he knows that I did the work, but to me it’s not weak to acknowledge the others and share the credit. Instead, I think of this as the right thing to do.

      —Anna, age 30